Devourer of Souls
by Reichenbach
Summary: Something old is waking and only two people across the universes can feel it. Post Doomsday, because nobody likes an unhappy ending. 10 Rose kinda sorta. Second in the Doors series.
1. Chapter 1

Unbeta'd. My beta won't turn the frick around and pay attention to me :wink:

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own the stuff I don't own. But if I did own… oh, if wishes were fishes. Anyways… Last story (Doors) was supposed to be a one-shot, but some of the FB got me thinking... oh, you guys're naughty. Naughty, naughty naughty for being on the same page with me, and for getting me to write more in the last two days than probably in the last four or five months total. GRAD SCHOOL is the devourer of souls. No. Really. /self-indulgent rant

Devourer of Souls

XYZ

Tossing the book on the floor beside her, Violet sighed, then flopped onto her back, staring up at the ceiling moodily. "I'm being bored to death."

Rose didn't even look over her desk as the small child. "Melodrama won't get you anywhere." Flipping through another completely uninteresting case file, she tossed it into her outbox. Once a month she ran through the entire list, mostly just checking for anything that caught her eye. Apparently the section leaders trusted her instincts. Which was swell in the field, not so great for the load of paperwork.

Which is why, at seven p.m. she was—depressingly—still there, and Violet was sitting on the floor in her office.

Her mother factored into the equation, if she was to be fair. It had been with a certain resignation that Rose, Pete and Mickey had all read Violet's report card, in fact, they'd had a rather long dinner conversation in the cafeteria about it yesterday. Jackie, however, had lost it. Not just a little—quite a lot.

Today, when dropping Violet off at afternoon nursery, she'd told the teacher exactly what she thought.

Rose hadn't been there, but she'd heard all about it from the school staff, when they'd explained that Jackie would not be allowed on school grounds for the rest of the year. The older woman hadn't been violent, but apparently asking "What kind of a jackass would write these things about this sweet, innocent little girl?" wasn't endearing.

It irked the rest of the "family," but the teacher had been right in a sort, if awfully cold about it. Violet was "extremely intelligent but exceptionally emotionally undeveloped." Of course, no one really agreed that recommending that Violet attend a school for "troubled" children instead of recommending promotion to grade one was probably not course of action anyone had been looking for.

Mickey'd volunteered to blow up the lady's minivan. It had gotten a chuckle out of the group, but just kind of made everyone a little more depressed about the problem. They'd all been in the thick of it with the Doctor when their lives had changed, and as a result, they always kept their heads together, even after all this time. As a result, all four of them felt an increased amount of responsibility towards Violet, hence the school problem being everybody's problem.

Pete was in a meeting, explaining to some higher-ups exactly what the Melfornian gravity thrusters were, and why they were worth the trade of sixty tons of whole-grain rice to a six-ring-circus ship, so Rose had ducked out to grab Violet. It was the end of the month, so instead of just calling it a day, here they were, back in her office, doing paper work.

Rose heard Violet's head thunk on the carpet. "Don't do that, you'll give yourself brain damage." While she was concerned that Violet was always off in her own little gloom and doom world, it was also incredibly amusing, if one let one's self take a step back from it—which Jackie didn't seem to do. She took everything involving Violet so… personally.

Really. Violet was only five. Rose's mother didn't need to pitch such a fit over everything. Kids did things… "I-wanna-go-down-to-R-and-D." Each word was punctuated by the thud of the girl's head hitting the carpet.

With a roll of her eyes, Rose leaned forward to make sure the girl wasn't doing herself permanent harm. Violet was splayed across the floor like a snow angel, one side of her over-alls unbuckled. Her dirty blonde hair was in a moppy tangled mess, and her head was lulling back and forth in boredom and disgust. "Why don't you draw me a picture," Rose suggested, hoping to buy a few more minutes to finish the reports.

One arm flopped over the tiny face. "Why don't I poke my own eyeballs out with a letter opener?" the girl replied dramatically, rolling onto her stomach. She really should be on the soaps. "It's not fair. I hate your office, it's the stupidest place on all of earf."

The snort was out of Rose's mouth (nose?) before she could stop it and she let out a cowing laugh. "Alright! We'll go look at toys down stairs, if you can behave for a few minutes while I finish this up." But Rose had to agree—her office WAS the stupidest (or at least most boring) place on the planet.

The girl let out a whoop and scrambled to her feet. However, when Rose went back to her paperwork, disappointment, then boredom took over. When Rose tossed the next portfolio onto the stack, she snatched it up and dropped back on the floor, flipping through it like a comic book. "That's boring and dumb, that's boring and dumb…" This went on, until she got to the last page. She turned the photograph around and around, chewing on a bit of hair as she did so.

Rose would have said something about the hair chewing thing, it being both gross and an obsessive-compulsive habit, but Violet's yapper was shut for a few minutes—until her five year old attention span moved on to the next thing. Opening the next folder, Rose tried to skim as quickly as possible.

"What's a 'Lem-Lemuxarius Filivander?'"

Licking her lips, Rose tossed the latest report onto the pile and grabbed the next-to-last one.

"Lemuxarius Filivander…eater of souls?" The girl made a face and pushed it away from her. "I didn't like that one."

Rose turned the pages more quickly. Violet was going to get the ants in her pants again, she could just feel it.

But at the foot of her desk, Violet scrambled away, towards the glass wall that looked out over a goodly bit of the darkening city. "I don't like it."

Tossing the second to last report on the stack, Rose pushed the final one away from her, in no mood to even open the portfolio cover. Walking around the desk, she wearily bent over to retrieve the folder, which was opened to the final page, a photo of a metal urn of unknown composition, covered entirely in squiggles of one kind or another. "Again with the melodrama, Violet. That's not even a known language, so nice try, kiddo." Kids liked to "read" stories to grownups. Usually they'd take their favorite story book, look at the pictures, and make it up as they went along. Violet had been reading for an entire year, so she wasn't sure where the sudden burst of 'creativity' had come from.

Frowning, Violet pulled her knees to her chest, looking at Rose in betrayal—or as much betrayal as a five year old could muster. "Devourer of those without limits."

Gathering up the stack of read folders, Rose reached a hand down. "Come on. If you want to see Mickey and his friends in R&D, you're going to have to get up off the floor."

Violet believed, whole-heartedly, that Fairies made the Coo-coo clock in the upstairs hall chime and twitter every half-hour, so sometimes it was tough to remember that she was a smart little girl. 'Devourer' was such a large word for such a little girl to use in proper context. Much less being poetic with the 'without limits' bit. "Without limits, aye?"

Violet didn't say anything as Rose walked the stack over to her section head's office, then dumped them on his desk. "Nothin' here. I think Vi's gunna jump out of her skin if we don't get out of here."

William winked at the little girl. "Sure, we still have tomorrow. Plenty of time to crank out a few reports. Of course…"

Rose bobbed her head. "Being ahead of schedule is like asking the universe to throw some crisis at us that leaves us here till 8 am, Monday morning. I guess we're better off not tempting fate."

"But…the Lemuxarius Filivander." Ever so gently, Rose pulled the girl behind her skirt. "eats the ones without limits."

Rose's boss gave her a slightly sympathetic look. "You have fun with that."

Dragging the girl behind her, Rose headed to the elevator. "Ya need to work on being a little less creepy, honey."

This was the reason Rose didn't like having her at the office. Mickey liked it, Pete liked it… they got parade her around like a cuter, slightly more interactive show dog. Jackie liked it because it meant that, for a few hours during the day, she wasn't 'on Violet duty,' as she called it.

Come to think of it—that was probably Jackie's real issue with the teacher thing (scathing insult to the family aside)… Jackie had been really REALLY looking forward to full-day school. It wasn't like Pete didn't have enough money to hire help, but Jackie insisted on keeping her 'little pal and helper' up close and personal. And they really did have fun together all day. It was just… well, a little bit of Violet went a long way, sometimes, and Jackie needed a break. Fortunately, there were more than enough hands willing to take over in a pinch. Basically—Violet had everyone, including Rose's boss, wrapped around her finger.

Rose… tended to take Violet with a grain of salt. She didn't know why—she just always felt like she was "on" to the little girl. And for the most part, Violet saved her antics for everyone else. They had a comfortable relationship in that sense. Rose didn't stand for the antics, and Violet didn't feel compelled to push it. The melodrama thing was just who Violet was, deep down.

"We can't stick around long. Mickey's kinda busy." Actually Rose had completely dumped something on him to reverse engineer. The whole car mechanic thing had certainly helped him when they'd started up with Torchwood, in addition all the lovely tidbits he'd picked up trying to get rid of the Cybermen on this earth.

Rose sighed. Yet another reminder that this was here, and that was home…

Violet shrugged. Apparently she wanted to go down to R & D badly enough to bang her head off the carpet, and make up things about devourers and such, but not badly enough to care that they'd be leaving soon. There really were days when she missed certain…things about her old life. She wouldn't trade her dad or Violet for the entire world. It's just… some days she wanted her cake and to eat it too. Those were the days when she felt old.

The elevator slid downward, and she crushed Violet to her leg. "Incase I haven't told you lately, you're the best."

Violet squeezed her back. "No, you're the best."

Rose tweaked her nose. "No, you're the best."

The door opened and they came out onto the warehouse floor. The holding Rose's hand thing lasted all of about two seconds, till she saw Mickey bent over a smoking device. Then she took off running and smashed right into the back of his legs. Feigning surprise, Mickey turned around, wiping his hands on his pants, then scooping the girl up. "And just what do we have here? Somebody breaking into our top secret headquarters?"

Yet another thing that bothered some of Rose's coworkers: Violet had free run of the place, and they couldn't tell anyone where they worked. Add that to Rose's father being a higher-up, and one that they perceived to only be working here as a hobby, since it wasn't like he needed the money. Rose's office, the special deference she often got in regards to some of the truly sensitive matters, and suddenly the hostility is palatable.

She didn't care—she was doing something that needed to be done; something that mattered, and the people who actually MATTERED in this organization (namely her superiors) might look at her funny, but understood a bit of her unique expertise, and actually valued it. To hell with the bitter spooks and the snotty office jockeys. 'Cuz when the world was coming to an end, who did they come running to?

"Earth to Rose!"

Rose's eyes snapped back to Mickey. She'd been off in her happy place again. Well, it wasn't happy, necessarily. Just the part of her that liked to dwell on things. "Don't mind me. I need a nap and some food. Possibly in that order."

Mickey put Violet down, but left a hand on the girl's head so that she couldn't wander off. "What ever happened to Dr. Seuss? I mean… what's with the 'soul eater' stuff she's going on about?"

Rose shrugged. "She thinks she can read Mehndolson's report."

A cough hiding a laugh escaped Mickey's throat. "Good luck with that. Jibberish mixed with …gobbldy gook."

"Oh no. The report was both 'boring and stupid.' But the photos of the urn. She's been going on and on. She needs more dolls or someth--" Rose stopped, looking down at Violet. "What're ya doin', Vi?"

The little girl was humming to herself, fiddling with the pistons of the tiny, fragile engine no one could quite figure out. "It's like a balloon, and another balloon, and they're filling up with air, and getting closer and closer, and there's all that static in between. They'll touch and they'll stick together. It's like…everything getting bigger, comfier. There used ta be lots of rivers and lots of bridges. The bridges tumbled down and got washed away, away, away out to sea. The rivers moved further apart. But the balloons are coming closer together. There're no bridges. But you can step across the stones; your feet'll get wet, but the current won't pull you under." Violet was silent for a moment, then the tiny engine that had sputtered and smoked just a moment before hummed to live and turned evenly, not an ounce of atmosphere burning off of it.

Mickey crouched down beside her. "What's like rivers and balloons?"

Violet's hand hovered above the clean-burning engine. She seemed distant, far away. "You can cross the stepping stones, but only at low-tide. You can cross the stepping stones, but you gotta run and hurry and hide. They come in ships, looking for the ones with two intentions and many faces. They come in ships to devour their souls. They come in ships, once in a score-and-twenty. They come to devour the ones without limits; they devour their power. They devour it and then sleep. They sleep for a score-and-twenty, the power lets them wander in the night. The power lets them destroy, backwards and forwards. They come in a handful of turns. They come to devour…"

Teeth clenched, Rose grabbed Violet's shoulders and shook them, unable to listen to any more. Spinning the girl around, Rose looked into the child's eyes, seeing a vast nothingness. Eyes dilated frighteningly large, the child's face was a blank. Rose shook her, saying her name over and ovcr, but the child continued on. "The balloons stick together at low tide and the stepping stones are the only way out. It's expanding; they've felt it. They were sad when the bridges crumbled, but the stepping-stones have appeared. They come in a handful of turns. The universe is expanding."

The unseen power that had funneled itself through the child flowed dry and she collapsed into Rose's arms. Clutching Violet protectively to her chest, she looked up at Mickey, trying to catch her breath. "Find that thing. Find the urn and find Mehndelson." Rose licked her lips as something else caught her eye. She couldn't remember being more scared in recent memory.

The tiny engine hummed louder and louder, until energy wisped out of it like smoke. The pistons slid back and forth further and further, escaping up into the rafters, moving on to who-knew-where.

Rocking Violet, Rose didn't see the group of developers that had come to surround the child. They were coming? Who was coming?

The most peculiar thing of all was the child's final statement. The universe was expanding.

XYZ

Somewhere else, a ship spiraled through time and space, the sound of her passing soothing, almost hypnotic. Her sole occupant leaned over a console, watching numbers flash across a screen—looking but not really seeing. He wasn't lost in though, so much as the absence of though.

Sometimes it was the best place to be.

He didn't come back to himself until the ship lurched, giving out a startled moan of metal as it jogged him out of a thoughtless limbo. Instantly he steadied himself, grabbing hold of the nearest solid objects.

A second later he was knocked off of his feet, not by the apologetic tossing of the ship, but by the force of the feeling erupting in his chest and the pressure pushing outwards from the center of his mind.

On hands and knees, he struggled to draw in full, deep breaths, trying to steady himself against the implosion in his heart and the outward thrusting of his thoughts.

Tears actually welled in his brown eyes at the intensity of it, and it seemed to take forever to pass. Out of exhaustion, he finally collapsed onto his side, his suit jacket twisting under him and smudging with floor grime.

Resting his head against the grate beneath his head, he willed the feeling to pass and was almost swallowed by it again. In defeat, his eyes closed and let the push and pull tear him apart until the sudden stretch in the fabric of all he knew and could see was stretched beyond repair.

The universe was expanding, and it had nearly torn the Doctor to pieces.

TBC.


	2. Chapter 2

Standard disclaimers apply.

Devourer of Souls part 2

XYZ

The universe was expanding. Which was almost a ludicrous statement; the universe was always expanding. But this was… sudden, drastic. It was expanding and swelling with energy, pushing so hard it would soon be crushed up against the other universes, filling the nothingness in between.

The universe was pushing on itself like an overfilled balloon, and if something wasn't done, it'd burst.

These were not the Doctor's first thoughts upon waking on the metal grill in the control room of the TARDIS, though. . Pealing his cheek off of the metal, he began digging the eye gunk out of the corners of his eyes, trying to judge by that how long he'd been out. It had been a while, maybe a day. He was not traveling with anyone at the moment, and he regretted it; someone to drag him to bed, or at least kick him in the stomach until he woke up and dragged himself there would have been fine. Oh, yes, Mrs. Dougherty, how he missed you now, you cantankerous banshee. A swift kick in the guts was what he needed.

It was slow going, getting to his knees. But after that, the haul to a standing position went a little easier. It had been about a year since he parted ways with the widow Dougherty, pleasant enough when things were going her way, but if they weren't… well, the tea burns on the back of his hand were quite enough reminder. The demented part was that he recalled enjoying her company. She was completely unbearable a full three-fifths of the time, and somehow that worked.

Nine hundred years was a long time to live. When one remembered everything, it tended to get jumbled, unless there was a strict filing system. All those folders bore the names of people or events, and everything was either filed as before or after. Somehow Mrs. Dougherty had gotten her own filing folder. He probably should thank her for distracting him for as many months as she was on board. Mostly he'd found himself needing the distraction from the previous folder, Rose Tyler. There were many people and events before her, many after, but his thoughts always went back to her.

Dragging himself off to bed, he imagined he could hear her laughing at him. "A sorry sight you are," she'd mock. "Passin' out on the grill floor? That can't be comfortable…"

Falling down face-first on the red and gold Maravian blankets, he had to smile, despite feeling like his brain had turned to mush and was leaking slowly out his ears. She'd have totally babied him. Maybe for a whole half-hour before becoming utterly annoyed that he was being no fun at all. Those were good times.

He had centuries of practice of pushing out the rest and just dwelling on the good. Everybody left him eventually. Like Mrs. Dougherty. Who was now no longer Mrs. Dougherty. She'd fallen in love with the sixth Duke of New New York, and was now happily living (or as happily as she was capable of living) out there. And those that didn't leave him… well, all he could do was hope they remembered him fondly throughout the remaining course of their tiny lives.

But then there was Rose. She hadn't left him. He hadn't left her. She was out there, and he was here, and… well, the universe had certainly had other plans, hadn't it?

It seemed like he'd moved onto that whole "remembering fondly" phase a lot quicker in the past. Heck, he was even remembering the semi-good time with Mrs. Dougherty. But he kept coming back to Rose.

Closing his eyes he began to drift off again. The universe had just expanded, it made him think of her. It'd be sweet if it weren't also just a little unnerving.

Of course, who wouldn't think of Rose? Blonde hair, button nose… and her laugh. Boy could she laugh. His Bad Wolf. Really—who wouldn't be endeared to a woman who'd destroyed millions of Daleks. And not just then and there—reaching through out time and destroying them. It made him positively giddy to think of.

He fell asleep again, thinking of her.

It only lasted a few minutes, though. Face still buried in his blankets, he heard it clear as day. "You can cross the stepping stones, but only at low-tide. You can cross the stepping stones, but you gotta run and hurry and hide."

His head snapped up, and all thoughts of resting further were banished. He remembered everything—it was all filed in there somewhere. Those words were far and distant, a child's memory of a child's rhyme. So many years had past since his own childhood, since he'd chanted the Tumbling Bridge rhyme. With his people gone, there was no one to continue saying the ancient words. But he'd heard it—a child's voice, a girl's voice that reminded him of Rose.

Realizing that further attempts at resting were likely to be futile, he sat up on the edge of the bed, running a hand through his choppy brown hair, trying to sort it all through.

The universe was expanding—and it was playing tricks with his mind.

XYZ

Rose leaned on the doorjamb of the medical center, one foot out of her heel and flat on the linoleum. She'd untucked her blouse about an hour ago, and the jacket had gone an hour before that. If this went on any longer, she was going to get her sweaty gym clothes out of her locker and crawl back into them. "And you really don't have the slightest idea?" As soon as she'd asked it, she regretted it—the poor doctor must have been asked that by Rose forty seven times in the last fifty-five minutes. Add to that all the times Pete came down here to bug and bother, and the guy reviewing the test results just might growl at her.

The doctor, a balding, round man in his late fifties, looked up from his computer, pushing the glasses up on the bridge of his nose. "I'm still working on it. I could tell you what's abnormal about this case, but I think you know that already. Now I need to track down what is abnormal within the abnormalities. It's going to take time." Standing, the man came around the desk, trying to persuade Rose to get out of his doorway. "Get yourself something to eat, make yourself comfortable. Maybe go sit with her."

Rose's chin fell to her chest and she sighed. "You're right. I'm just… y'know. I'm the one who took her down there." Sliding her foot back into her shoe, she tugged on her shirt, making herself vaguely presentable then folded her arms over her chest.

The man put a hand on her shoulder and guided her out the door. "You said it started just with looking at the photograph. Taking her down to R & D seems kind of secondary."

Taking a few steadying breaths, Rose walked back into the room down the hall.

"And then the bunny said to the mailman…" Mickey looked up from the children's book. "They know what's goin' on?"

Rose shrugged, looking at the little inert girl asleep in the large bed. "Nobody knows. They're looking at the urn again—they can't scan it, they can't get the lid off. It's just a heavy, ugly urn." Throwing herself into the chair on the opposite side of the bed, Rose's head dropped into her hands. "What the hell am I doin' bringing a kid in here, Mickey? What the hell am I doin', exposing her to every bad thing under the sun?"

Closing the book, Mickey put it on the bed beside the girl, careful not to disturb the probes and monitors. "We bring her in all the time. I bring her in, Pete brings her in… what makes you bringing her in so much more horrible?"

A sharp retort was on the edge of her lips, but it sort of died there. "Fine. Alright. But I wanna be in here, with her. But I want to be out there, fixing it. I'm not doing anything at all…"

Mickey leaned over the bed intently. "Rose, calm down. Your dad's on it. Your mum's on her way, and she'll stay here with her. You can figure out what you're gunna do."

Rose sunk into the chair, suddenly very tired. "I just wish…" she couldn't bring herself to say the rest. She wished the Doctor was there. He'd know what it all meant. He'd know what to do. And if he didn't—he'd make something up, which she wasn't even capable of doing right now. She'd repelled two earth invasions all on her own, now, and she couldn't even fake it when it came to dealing with a weird prophecy, and a little girl who wouldn't wake up.

XYZ

This was just the sort of thing the Time Lords would have been all over. Spontaneous Universal Expansion. Not really something he'd heard of, but he could feel it—the expansion wasn't just limited to this moment—the universe had expanded forward and backward throughout all of time. It FELT related to his kind, even if he were the last of it.

Pulling a stack of books off the top shelf, he sat down on the floor, flipping through pages. Even a hint would be helpful. A burst of inspiration…

Another voice. Something to go on. He probably wasn't going to get that lucky, of course…things had just been kind of going that way lately.

A few hours later, he rested his arms on his knees and let his head fall back against the book case. He wasn't entirely out of options. There were always more books, more things in the computers to run through. But he felt like he was getting nowhere. The universe expands and has something to do with some fragment of some Gallifreyan nursery rhyme, and he's doing this the hard way. It seemed like there should be some great signpost somewhere.

Closing his eyes, he tried to leave out all the questions and reach out into the universe, to the very edges, which were irritated and raw with the pressure forcing them outward. His kind were the keepers of time and the universes and orders. Something had stirred all of this up.

He felt the edges, they were rubbery and well-worked, as if in preparation of this day. They'd been worked for years upon years, over five, maybe. He didn't have the faintest idea what could have launched this process. The universe had been in chaos during the time war, but things had settled down. They'd grown accustomed to the new way, even if the universe and time had developed about the same amount of order as an overgrown garden. And suddenly, the universe was realigning itself, backwards and forwards. It had spent years growing more malleable, and then something had taken advantage of that. There were two distinct forces at work here on the edges.

But what of the voice? What of the thing that had given him the first clue? Had that been something else entirely?

XYZ

After determining (to the best of their abilities) that the metal wasn't explosive in any sort of way and that the plug on top wasn't going to give, Mickey and another engineer began trying to cut through the seven-foot urn with a plasma torch. Sparks flew everywhere and the metal was glowing bright white, but they hadn't made a dent in it.

After about fifteen minutes of not even making a dent, Pete ordered them to turn it off. They stood around and watched it cool rather quickly from white-hot to red, then back to the sort of dirty pewter grey it had started out as. A few engineers were left to continue messing with the urn, but Rose, Pete and Mickey turned their attention to other matters. Mickey took the tiny engine up to one of the research labs, trying to figure out what sort of energy it had given off, once Violet had gotten it working.

Jackie had come, and had raised a storm of trouble with all three of them for letting something happen to Violet. Just what the hell did they think they were doing, letting her near dangerous stuff? Pete had gone to meet with the section heads; this was going to be an all-nighter.

Rose sat in the lab with Mickey, flying through files on her laptop, trying to get even the tiniest spark of inspiration.

Mickey couldn't get the motor running again. It sputtered out it's magic, and then had died just after the force that Violet had been channeling left her. It took a full hour before Mickey pushed it away from himself in defeat.

Rose closed the laptop, leaving it where it was. "I had a feeling it wouldn't work." Without explaining herself, she started marching away from them.

"We'll think of something!" Mickey called back to her.

Without responding, Rose headed for the elevator.

They were really out of their depths. She'd let Violet get mixed up in their whole crazy world, and now no one could wake her. No one could explain her brain activity, because there was no precedent, or baseline comparison. No one could wake her, or explain what that urn had managed to do, or what would happen next. It didn't matter if Violet was a special little girl—these things shouldn't happen to children.

Which had been exactly what Jackie had been hollering about the last time she'd checked on them. There were times tonight when she'd fully expected her mother to wale off and whack her in a manner reminiscent of Jackie used to handle the Doctor.

Rose didn't head back to the medical ward. They wouldn't know anything.

They'd paged in two dozen department heads and researchers, no one had a damned clue. There was only one person who even had a chance of having a clue, and all she could do was hope that she could make a very long distance call to her man in the straw hat.

In her office, Rose opened the safe behind her desk, then unlocked the cage past the four-inch thick door. Beneath a handful of papers and some other items was a wooden box. Inside was a small piece of cloth. Grabbing it, she instantly felt that it had no weight. Unravelling the wad only confirmed what she already knew: the TARDIS key was gone.

Outside of her office, she heard the elevator ding, then feet stomping hard on the floor. Her door flung open and Mickey looked at her, almost stricken, trying to catch his breath. "Violet's gone," he managed to gasp out. "Your mom fell asleep about an hour ago. None of the building sensors have her or saw her leave the ward. They don't know when she woke."

Rose's heart lurched, finding its way into her throat. "Find her! Get everybody on it!"

The forgotten and useless rag fell to the floor as she rushed out of the office after Mickey. The universe was expanding… and there wasn't anyone here with the capacity to tell her why this was happening.

XYZ

The universe hadn't shifted in several hours. The Doctor had been waiting for it, but nothing had happened. Some new status quo had been achieved. Slowly pressure that had been ever-present in his mind and the tension in his chest lessened, and the Doctor looked around him at the mess of books on the floor.

A fragment of a nursery rhyme, the swollen walls of the universe, and the voice of a child in his head. The whole thing seemed to have stopped and even gave the impression of being final and complete, but all those loose ends still remained.

Kicking around a few of the books, the Doctor cleared a path to the door. It was time to talk to the computers, see if they, or the ship knew what force had caused this. Or, if nothing else, it was time to catch up on obscure Time Lord fairy tales.

Winding through the halls, the Doctor began to pick through the elaborate filing system of his mind. Back past Rose, the Time wars, past so many of his former selves, back to his childhood. He'd been as isolated then as he was at this moment—his mother wanted to understand him and had tried so hard. His father saw him as he ought to be, not as he was, or wanted to be. Tutors keeping a formalized professional indifference and the others his own age…

No, there was too much of that in there. He didn't need that. He needed the rhyme. "There're no bridges. But you can step across the stones; your feet will get wet, but the current won't pull you under…" What the world was the rest?

XYZ

When she'd gotten the call that they'd found Violet, Rose didn't bother with the elevator. She kicked off her heels and ran down the five flights as fast as her legs would take her. Pushing open the door leading into the Development floor, she scrambled out of the fire steps and over to the group that had gathered.

About twenty people in total had gathered—her section head, William, was holding the girl on his lap, sitting in one of the chairs. She saw two more section heads, a handful of researchers and engineers and almost a dozen security agents.

She heard Jackie coming off the elevator with Pete behind her, that type of hollering was unmistakable, she didn't need to look back. Pressing through the crowed, she stopped and knelt at Violet's side.

William breathed a sigh of relief. "They just found her in here, wandering out from behind the urn, and some of the bigger devices. She didn't say anything, didn't make a sound. No one knows how she got in and why no one saw her."

When she pulled the girl out of her boss's grasp, he didn't stop her. "Violet, honey. Where have you been? You had us all worried sick…"

Violet looked up at him with brown saucery eyes. "I didn't run away. It just wanted me to know something." Very discretely, Violet put her clenched hand into Rose's, and left something in it, before sliding her hand back and away.

Rose knew exactly what it was, as soon as the warm metal touched her hand—the TARDIS key. "What did it want you to know, sweetie?"

The girl buried her head in Rose's shoulder, clutching her neck tightly. "It wanted me to know I shouldn't be afraid when the bad wolf sends me away."

In that instant, Rose's heart lurched in her chest.

XYZ

Leaning over a console in the control room, the Doctor watched facts and figures from the Great Age of Gallifrey scroll by. Slowly the rhyme worked itself to the top of his mind. He couldn't dig out all the words just yet, but the images were planted so plainly there for him to see, the bridges fell down and were washed out to sea, then the stepping stones appeared. Running across the stones was the only way to escape…

It wasn't a nursery rhyme… it was a warning.

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

Standard disclaimers apply.

Devourer of Souls

Chapter 3

xyz

The Doctor could only recall the first few lines. He remembered repeating them over and over as a child,

The bridges tumbled down with age,

The bridges were washed away

Away, away, out to sea.

A few other lines rolled round and round, without a home and he began to suspect that the beginning was all, culturally, the Time Lord children had remembered. It took almost a half-hour before he could find the rest, and it only served to confirm his fears:

The bridges tumbled down with age,

The bridges were washed away.

Away, away, out to sea.

Once bridges so many, cross rivers so many

Rivers grow wide, all and any

Children understand, once they are grown.

No bridges, just mossy stepping stones

Grown-up's greatest blunder

Your feet will get wet; the current won't pull you under.

Cross the stones, but only at low tide

Cross the stones, run and hurry and hide.

They come, looking

For the ones with two intentions and many countenance

They come hungry.

Once a score and twenty for the ones without confines

They come to devour

Then sleep, digesting such power

It lets them destroy, backwards and forwards

They were sad when the bridges tumbled,

But then the stepping-stones appeared.

Cross the stones, but only at low tide

Cross the stones, run and hurry and hide.

The only way out, before they come.

Where once was one, now are two

But cross the stones before they come for you.

The universe is expanding.

The universe was expanding; there it was again.

Was it possible the Time Lords had prophesized their own demise? Why burry it in a children's tale? Earth people had a nasty habit of stuffing the truly macabre into children's rhymes, but his own people? It seemed so… unlike them.

The poem was ancient, however, from what he could tell. Perhaps it had been derived at a time before stuffy senators and austere palaces?

A time when Time Lords were less about duty, and, perhaps, more curious about their world. Maybe they had overstepped that curiosity and awakened something sinister, like the devil at the black hole. Perhaps they knew it was coming again, and knew they'd be little-to-no good at all, and had left the appropriate clues at hand.

Scrolling through the verses, recommitting them to memory, the Doctor sighed.

Fantastic—and he meant that strictly in the most un-fantastic sense—they'd left clues, but they'd forgotten to leave an answer key.

There had been times when the Time Lords drove him nuts. They'd once exiled him to Earth as some sort of punishment that only they, themselves could understand. Now they expected him to clean up their mess, and weren't giving him enough information to do it. Except for the fact of there not being any more Time Lords, it was almost just like old times.

They were all gone, but what of the two? "Where once was one, now are two," it had to mean something.

Could there be another Time Lord?

XYZ

After a truly terrifying twenty-four hours, Violet had been given clearance by the medical staff to leave, and they'd brought her home immediately. Tucking her between sparkling pink sheets and pulling the spring-green comforter up to her chin, Rose reached beneath the blankets and tickled the girl mercilessly. "Scaring everybody out of their minds. That's what happens when you frighten everyone… the Tickle Monster comes for you…"

The girl laughed and howled until she was exhausted from it. Rose lay next to her for just a moment while she settled in. Excitement right before bed seemed to have the opposite effect on Violet—instead of keeping her awake, it seemed to work as an excellent nightcap. "Alright. I think someone's here with your glass of water."

Jackie sat down on the other side of the child, putting the glass on the night stand. "You've had a long couplea days. Lets say you snuggle in tight, and sleep the whole night through, then we'll have some waffles in the morning."

Rose left Jackie to the job of tucking Violet in. When she got out into the hall and closed the heavy wooden door behind her, she found Mickey and her father lying in wait, glaring at her. "She's almost asleep," Rose whispered, defensively.

Pete leaned in to her. "I want to talk to you about what Violet said, about the wolf sending her away." Great. She'd confided in Mickey, and he'd run straight to her dad.

"I told Pete about the Bad Wolf." Mickey's voice sounded apologetic, but his face did not. "And I think someone should tell Jackie. I guess it just depends on whether it's you, or one of us."

Rose's heart sunk. Her mother new all about the Bad Wolf, she'd been there. Her mother would know that some as-of-yet unidentified piece of alien technology had told Violet that the "Bad Wolf" was going to send her away. Couldn't they just… not tell mom? "I just… don't want to upset her."

Pete shook his head. "We've been through the worst of it together, we can deal with this together. And believe me, I think Jackie's going to notice if you 'send Violet away.' It'll be for the best."

Rose let out a bitter laugh. "Oh yeah, it'll be for the best. When mum disembowels me with her French tips." Deep down, Pete was right. Her mother did need to know. "I just… Look. I know. But we need to get to the bottom of this prophecy business. We need to figure out what it means… and how to beat it."

Mickey squeezed her shoulder. "It might not mean anything at all. It might be something alien going screwy and malfunctioning. I mean, the stuff she was saying—it didn't make any sense."

She pat his hand, then pulled away. "No. I trust that." Violet giving her back the TARDIS key had impressed the seriousness of the warning (threat?). Rose just didn't know what to do about it.

Rose sighed. "Alright. I'll tell mum. But I want someone running backup—I don't want her to claw my eyes out."

One thing she knew above all else, was that time was fluid. Nothing was set in stone (cast into the indestructible metal exterior of a really ugly vase, maybe), and predestination could be changed. The Doctor had taught her that.

XYZ

After pondering the possibility of there being Another (in the strictly Yoda-type prediction sense), the Doctor tried to work his way through the rhyme. The first bit could have meant a dozen things, but he had his suspicions, especially in the context of this whole thing revolving around the Time Lords. The most recent bit he was stuck on was the "score and twenty." A score WAS twenty. Did that mean whatever was coming would come in forty-whatevers?

The Doctor looked back twenty years, into his people's history. He looked back forty. Then two hundred, four hundred, two thousand…

Twenty thousand years ago, nothing significant happened. But two hundred years beyond that…

The Doctor found something.

Or more accurately—nothing. All records for a twenty year period—gone. Then history picked up again, as though nothing were amiss. What had been removed from the Time Lords' records, and why?

XYZ

They came in ships. Not them—their body. Their body slept. Their mind reached out over the universes though. It was the wreaker of havoc and the instigator of trouble. It was one, but many. Violet didn't understand it, but it was so. She didn't understand it, but she accepted it.

The mischief maker's body slept, while it's mind caused chaos. It rose only once in a score and twenty, when it's body needed to feed. It needed the power of the entire universe, forward and backward in time. It devoured those with many faces…

And it was coming.

She saw it in her dreams every night, but she didn't say anything. What was there to say? The urn had told her what would happen, how she'd be sent away. There was no reason to make the grownups worry or cry. Or worse yet—do more tests on her, or ask her more questions.

She stopped wanting to go to Torchwood after that. The doctors used to be nice and gave her stickers and candy. Now they always had questions and scans. And they looked at her differently. Everybody did. She'd always felt like the "odd girl," but it was even worse now. Mum would tell her she wasn't different in an odd way—just different. Special.

Violet knew what "special" meant.

Summer came and went. Her mum insisted on sending her to a private school close to Torchwood (eww). Uncle Mickey dropped her off and picked her up every day. He'd drive her home, then he'd go back there. She hated that her family worked there, now, suddenly. It had been fun, but now all the fun was gone. It was just tests and stares from people. And sometimes the urn talked to her. Which was weird. Probably the weirdest part was—it wasn't weird. That kinda stuff happened at Torchwood. It was just… no one else could hear it.

Which went directly back to that being 'special' thing that she hated so dearly. What was so wrong with fitting in?

Violet brushed the fur back from the eyes of her teddy bear, then squished him closer to her as she turned the page of the novel, her feet kicking back and forth in the air as she lay on the squishy bedroom carpet. She couldn't wait to grow up. Firstly, she'd be taller. Being short was the worst. The second worst is knowing stuff, but not understanding. She could read all the words, and she knew what they meant. But there was something she was missing. Something that made the novel about werewolves and men with crossbows seem boring and grownup.

When her class last year had been going over their letters forever and ever and ever, she didn't want to be normal. She liked knowing more. But she wanted to fit in. Mostly she wanted everybody else to catch up to her, instead of her having to slow down.

The universe was expanding, and she was stuck learning about the color wheel. Red and green and blue made white, anyways, no matter how much paint they mixed in class.

XYZ

The Doctor stomped his foot like a pouty child. "If you loved me, you'd just go there," he informed his ship. He got a knocking moan in response, then steam poured out of an area he thought repaired yesterday.

Rushing over to it, he clamped down the leak and frowned. He'd been going round and round with the TARDIS intermittently over the last four months about this. What was so difficult about going back twenty-thousand two-hundred years ago? They'd been to the beginning of time, to the end of time and all points in between. But every time he set these coordinates, he ended up some place else, and it was some place where there was trouble enough to keep him occupied. And of course, if the Doctor was occupied, then he wasn't having words with his unruly ship. He suspected she liked it better that way.

With the clamp re-fastened, he turned his attention back to the time console. "How's about twenty-thousand, two hundred years and three months ago?" The brown metal buttresses knocked and moaned. "Then tell me why not?"

Suddenly, the very noisy ship was silent.

XYZ

Rose assumed that seven months was a respectable period of time to wait. Well, seven months, one week and four days (it seemed random enough). Above all, she needed to ally suspicion. No one knew she had the TARDIS key, and no one knew about the Bad Wolf prediction. All they knew was that whatever had been stirred by Violet last spring had gone back to sleep.

She'd also had to wait until she was relatively alone in the building. It meant cutting Christmas short with a faked page, but she was here and the guards that normally watched over this room were doing double duty watching the labs. She'd watched the rotations, and she had about twenty-three minutes before anyone swung back this way to take a look in on a bunch of uninteresting storage lockers.

The room itself was vast. It was several stories tall and it had to be. It contained every artifact currently not being examined, and a few of them (like the gutted space ship) were a bit tall for a normal storage facility. Rows of lockers in various sizes and shapes wound through the room like a hedgerow maze.

Rose moved quietly past a dozen lockers before finding the one she was looking for. As she punched the key code, she winced as every beep echoed through the space. Cringing fully as the mechanical door opened, she looked at the urn that seemed to haunt her dreams.

It was a little over seven feet tall and its surface was a rough-cast battered metal covered in words of some kind. They'd never gotten a translation off of it, even with the little they'd dragged out of Violet. She'd clammed up completely after that night and they couldn't even get her to come into the building. Letting the locker door close behind her, Rose waited until the space was completely dark before turning on the torch she'd brought with her. Looking over the monstrosity, she pulled out her key and began searching for the door.

After what seemed like forever (and the coming and going of the guards), she found an especially thick groove in the center of an ornate character. The key slid in and turned, the door opening.

Rose stared into the vast space inside. When Violet had handed her the key, she'd suspected what it was, and there'd been no way in hell that she was going to tell Torchwood that they had a fully-functional TARDIS on their hands.

Stepping inside, she quietly closed the door behind her. She and this machine were about to have words. If Rose was sending Violet away, she wanted to know why, and to where.

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

Standard disclaimers apply.

Devourer of Souls

Chapter 4

XYZ

The Doctor was sitting on the grill floor, his head resting on a railing, legs splayed out in front of him. Stupid TARDIS… She'd nearly gotten him killed that time, rather than take him to where he wanted to go. Which only made him more curious—what was so bad that his ship would send him to every dangerous point in the history of the universe EXCEPT the one dangerous point he wanted to go to?

"You know," he told the unruly ship, "if you just told me, then I'd know, and I wouldn't keep trying." It was an argument he'd made possibly a thousand times over the last few years. He'd been through four traveling companions in that time. He'd to the Great Historian of Xarabac, the stretch marks on the edge of the universe… He'd even tricked the TARDIS into going twenty-thousand two-hundred years into the future, an act which had shown him NOTHING. Whatever the current problem was—it had obviously been resolved by then.

Which didn't help him in the now.

This had to be one of the longer problems he'd ever been caught up in. He'd been on his fair share of adventures since the expansion had nearly caused his head to explode. And it was still expanding, albeit more slowly. Something had stirred from it's rest, causing the sudden outward pressing of the universe. It was still pressing, trying to touch something.

He wasn't sure of what that was, but he knew one thing for certain—it had put it's pretty little sights on HIM. It needed to devour Time Lord energy to sustain itself, and to do whatever unfortunateness it had planned. It was coming for him, but there was something else. There was the other.

He knew for certain that there were no other Time Lords. He'd have felt it… but this seemingly mistaken nursery rhyme was convinced of it.

That last attempt to get to the bottom of things had taken a lot out of him. Closing his eyes, he caught a small nap just where he was, head propped up against a metal railing and all.

XYZ

Pete wasn't sure how to answer the question with which he'd just been presented. He casually dipped his spoon into his bowl and took another mouthful of soup before answering. "Everybody's different," he told Violet. "Everybody's a unique snowflake. Look at me, bald as the day is long. And you're mum's blond, Mickey's got decent hair…"

Across the heavy oak dining room table, Violet's brow furrowed as she concentrated deeply on her soupspoon. A long shadow crossed her features. That hadn't been what she meant at all, and he knew it. Why did grownups play such games? "Why am I not allowed to go to the school nurse?"

Sitting back in his chair a bit, Pete coughed into his napkin. She'd walked him right into this, of course. She'd waited until they were eating dinner alone together before asking him this. Jackie used distraction when it came up, Rose fed the girl the line about Violet being special in a good way, and Mickey always asked Violet why she was asking. Pete had been successfully dodging this bullet since the start of the school year.

Composing himself, Pete set the dark green napkin down next to his bowl. She was seven now, and every week it was get ting harder and harder to protect her. The good old C of E said seven was the 'age of reason,' and boy did that have that right. Reason, and figuring out that nothing was as it seemed or as she'd been told. "You've got some things going on that a regular old school health nurse wouldn't understand. Remember the thing with the giant vase? Or the Leppilig that followed Mickey home? We deal with some…different stuff at Torchwood, that's all. Different isn't as bad as you make it out to be, Vi."

Oh yes it was. Different was sitting alone on the playground and it was getting scans with doctors who always looked like they wanted to make a Y incision and dissect her right in the examining room. Still--the sitting alone on the playground thing was probably worse. Even the other kids who were alone wouldn't talk to her. Apparently she just screamed "freak!" Or had it tattooed on her forehead somewhere.

"Vi, why don't you just give it some time. Everybody has trouble fitting in now and again. Do you think everybody I work with likes me?" Actually, they were mostly suspicious of him. He HAD worked for Cibrus Industries, and he certainly had no real reason to be there—other than his own personal curiosity… and Violet of course. The child would probably never realize just how much of their world revolved around her. "And you're not going to get out of it. The doctors want to look you over before you start playing sports, and we're going to let them."

The girl was silent for a few minutes, just staring at him. Some things she just didn't talk about, like the dreams that she still had every night. "I hate going to Torchwood. I can feel the scar there."

Pete paused, coming up short on clever replies. "Scar?"

She didn't know how to explain it. "There's a wound in the wall. It used to be a great big gash, but then it was sutured shut." When she saw how taken aback her dinner companion was, Violet knew she'd said the wrong thing. She didn't tell them everything because they'd always react with silence and thoughtfulness—just before a barrage of questions was leveled against her. "I'm tired. I'd like to go to my room now."

The girl took off without waiting to be dismissed. Someone was going to have to tell her something, at some point. Especially since years and millions sunk into research hadn't yielded even the slightest clue. The girl's agitation grew a little more every day… almost as if the final act of this weird play were finally beginning.

XYZ

The Doctor woke with a start so hard that he bashed his head right off the metal railing he'd been resting against. His head snapped forward so hard he was sure it was going to pop right off, once everything settled.

For the most part, he didn't dream. He didn't know if it was something unique to his species, or him in particular, being the innately flawed Time Lord that he was. When he remembered what he dreamed about, it was practically worth alerting the media.

It had been a long time since he'd drempt about Rose.

Often, in the early days after their separation, the dreams were almost a comfort—some small way to touch her across this great divide. He hadn't really cared much that it was his overactive Time Lord imagination trying to work through the distance. There was finality in death and abandonment. What had happened to them… well, at least he'd had that one last chance to say goodbye. He hadn't been able to say everything that he'd wanted to, or even all that he'd intended, but it had been something.

He'd chastised himself thoroughly for growing so attached. Hadn't he learned better after all this time? Apparently there were some things even he was slow to catch on to.

Another thing he'd been round and round with himself about: if he hated saying goodbye so much, why did he bother saying hello? Not many species lived as long as Time Lords. He'd be better off spending the rest of his days playing bridge with the Face of Boe.

No, the Doctor was broken in some way. He had an incessant attraction to the planet Earth, even for all the things that annoyed the hell out of him. Worse still was his insane fondness for humans. The ones that died the quickest of all the creatures in the galaxy that were worth spending time with.

_The rate at which a flame extinguishes is directly proportional to the brightness of it's light._

There were some ideas that were universal to all cultures. That, and Sweedish meatballs.

If he was damaged for wanting to stand next to that light, if only for a moment, then he supposed it was all right. There were other reasons he'd never quite made it into the Time Lord hall of fame, such as his need to tweak things. His father called it meddling. It wasn't meddling. He just… couldn't leave well enough alone.

Because it wasn't well-enough. The Time Lords were set in their ways, comfortable with the utopian order they had borne up over so many millennia. They only moved throughout time to maintain it's order, like a gardener getting his hands dirty to preserve the beauty of the carefully planted rows of tulips.

The Doctor was a bit more of a landscaper-turned-excavator-turned-archeologist. he wanted to know it all, touch it all, experience it all, and if he could help it, follow the Boyscout Code and leave a place just a little better than he found it. He was broken because he wasn't content just to maintain the teetering, tottering balance of what was and what should be in the universe. He wasn't very fond of petulance, plague, or beings picking on smaller, weaker beings, and he especially wasn't amused when humans were involved.

There were exactly two people in the universe to blame for his predicament: his own mother and Jackie Tyler. His mother for passing on that tiny piece of non-dominant human genetic material that had somehow managed to overwrite tried-and-true Time Lord genes to make him less than content with his station in life. Otherwise, why would he always be with the meddling…er…tweaking.

Stiffly, the Doctor struggled to his feet and tried to work the knots out of his battered, bruised and partially kinked body. "You're a very mean ship," he told the TARDIS. Even the old widow Dougherty (banshee that she was) wouldn't have let him sleep the night on the floor of the control room. Jackie Tyler maybe… but not Mrs. Dougherty.

He couldn't believe he missed the old bat. Either of them. Jackie had no problem with smacking around a lord of time. Bless her little heart. But if it weren't for Jackie Tyler, he might have had a chance at being able to file away that Rose Tyler folder, and possibly remembering what was, instead of what would never be.

He'd made the stupid mistake of getting to know her family. Being within smacking distance of someone's mother was far too close, if parting was inevitable.

He'd gotten too close, which was his first mistake. Especially after the Time Wars, he should have kept to the plan, of going it alone.

All that went out the window when he met Rose. It all seemed fated, the way it had worked out. Especially when he tried so hard to push her away and back to her boring life. Blowing up her job hadn't worked in his favor, certainly. Nor had her persistence. He hadn't WANTED anyone, but apparently he'd NEEDED someone, because they were inseparable after that. After the wars and his subsequent struggle to find his humanity (if that was the right word), she was there, and it only took her a few months to remind him that life was for living, not just existing in. It was alright to enjoy things—simple things. Otherwise, even if he was saving entire worlds, it didn't mean anything. He was just going through the motions. Damn Rose for being just what he needed at that time in his life.

It made the presence of her in his dreams understandable—but not her words. She was whispering, but it sounded like a scream. "I can't go with you. You'll be safe there…" The weight of her voice as intense as those times when they'd been running for their lives, the fate of the world in the balance. The weirdest part: she was wearing a really smart-looking black suit.

XYZ

Pulling out a small chair, Rose sat at the child's table. She waited for a moment, and when Violet appeared to not notice or care that she was there. Trying to maintain an air of lightheartedness, Rose tugged the book out of the girl's hands, then closed it, putting it down securely out of reach. "I think we need to have a little talk, Vi."

Violet pushed the chair away from the tiny table and marched over to the bed. Climbing on top, she folded her arms over her chest, letting Rose know that, in no uncertain terms, she was not going to talk.

Rose was about to put the thick novel down on the table, but she paused, staring at the cover, a werewolf caught in a glowing mist. "What're ya reading?"

Violet turned her head away—she wasn't going to be lured into a conversation.

So that was how it was going to be, then? Well, Rose had Violet's number. Rose had been the reigning champion of seven-year-old temper tantrums, and she could certainly outlast a pouty-pants. "I met a werewolf once. In Scotland of all places." She looked at the glowing silver arrows sticking out of the enraged creature's chest. "Silver doesn't kill 'em."

Violet stared out the window, like there was something really important out there.

Ignoring that she was being ignored, Rose sat down on the bed. "Yeah. werewolves are aliens. Betcha didn't know that."

Without warning, Violet's head whipped around, anger almost setting her brown eyes on fire. "Everything has to be aliens, doesn't it? EVERYTHING! Everything's Torchwood, and outer-space, and…and time, and… that other place! That other place you wish you could go back to!"

Rose slid off the bed and stood up, entirely stunned. Not since they'd left Norway, back when she'd said goodbye to her Doctor, did she dare voice that wish out loud. She only wanted to ask Violet about the "scar" she felt at Torchwood, but really—it was well beyond that. "I just miss it, is all," Rose began cautiously. Was she really justifying her own secret hopes to a seven year old, who should not be privy to them?

The child was making herself hoarse, she was screaming so loudly. "It doesn't have any windows! It's not a home!"

At the end of her nerves, Rose tried to maintain her composure by keeping her emotional distance. If she allowed herself to think the things making their way to the front of her mind, she'd simply break down. "First of all… I'm glad you're now the expert on the definition of a home. It's also not polite to go digging around in other people's private thoughts." There was no rule about it anywhere, but it probably fell under the category of reading someone's dairy. And if it didn't—well, snooping around in someone's brain certainly wasn't very British.

Keeping a calm tone had diffused some of the girl's anger. She was no longer screaming, but she was still a long way from the sweet, playful disposition she most often displayed. "I didn't go snooping. I can't snoop something that's coming off you so thick I can taste it. And the man that lives in the box with no windows… it's so big, it fills all the air and pushes down on my brain. And anyways—this is home. It has windows, and I'm here."

Kneeling down beside her, Rose wrapped both arms around the child, and pulled her into a tight hug. "I'm always going to be where you are, dummy. You are stuck with me, until you become an adult or decide to run off and join the circus." Kissing the girl's tear-stained cheeks, she brushed hair back from a sweaty, sticky forehead. "But this other stuff… we need to talk about it, Vi. You're different, all right? There, us stupid grownups admit it. You are different than other children. And it's not because your family—who loves you insanely, I might add—works at Torchwood. And we need to talk about that, alright?"

Tired and deflated, Violet relaxed against Rose. "Yeah. I know." Still, Violet thought, it was good for someone to finally admit it.

Picking the child up just a bit, Rose sat down on the bed with her. "Ok. So enough about what I know… what do you know, that's… different?"

XYZ

Being knocked to his knees, the Doctor bashed his forehead on the railing. The good news: he was now done on both sides. The bad news: his eyeballs may have just exploded and his brains gone spraying out all over the TARDIS control room. He wasn't sure—he was seeing too many stars.

Not in the head starving for oxygen kind of way, either—he saw stars. The universe was pushing outward on his head again, the old ugly stretch marks busting loose still more.

Trying to blink away the further painful and inevitable expansion of the universe, the Doctor managed to get to his feet. Jaw dropped and mouth contorting as he tried to shake the universe out of his mind, the Doctor began fumbling around at the TARDIS' controls. "Alright," he told her, setting the date back to twenty-thousand two-hundred years ago. "Don't take me to where I want to go. And don't take me to where you want me to be. Take me where I NEED to be." If his ship only ever did one more thing for him…

Slapping the activation device, he fell backwards and crashed into the railing (better the ribs and the railing than the neck and the deck below, or so he always told Rose when they'd go crashing against it).

Wondering if the universe meant to beat him to death with the constant thwacking and jarring, such as he'd been subject to lately, the Doctor held on as the ship scraped and lurched through time and space to… he knew not where. But he had to trust the TARDIS. They'd been traveling together for…how long? If she'd spent a year and a half or two years NOT taking him to the only vacant time marker for the entire universe, then he'd have to trust that she knew where the real action was.

Really—he probably should have figured that bit out sooner.

TBC


	5. Chapter 5

Standard disclaimers, bla bla bla. Sincerest apologies for post-doomsday fic eleventy-billiondy. But geeze... those people at the Beeb are mean, evil bastards. A lot.

XYZ

Devourer of Souls

Chapter 5

XYZ

The Doctor didn't get any real readings from the external sensors for the whole two seconds he'd looked at them. . They all seemed to be jumbled and conflicted, anyways. Not waiting for an engraved invitation, he trudged right out the front door. Taking two steps out into the dark, he ran straight into a metal door.

Using setting 179 on the sonic screwdriver, he illuminated the small space. Looking it up and down, he sighed. "Now you're just messing with me."

Deep inside the TARDIS, there was a low moaning knock. 

He was inside a steel box of some kind, something half way between an enormous locker and a safe. "The universe is going to POP if we don't do something, and you take me to a storage locker." It wasn't annoyance in his voice—it was frustration. The ship creaked then moaned, and he sighed at her. 

'Only trying to help' was a likely story. Pushing against the door, he confirmed that it was locked. Getting ready to zap the thing with his screwdriver, he changed settings, and then stopped. 

How long had he been traveling with her? She seldom took him exactly where and when he wanted to go… but he always took her where she was needed. "Alright, Smarty-pants," he told the TARDIS. We do it your way."

XYZ

Jackie sat in the oversized chair, both legs curled over an arm of the cozy chair. She was staring at the light coming off the fireplace, through her half-full wine glass. "This is all the Doctor's fault."

Across the room, Pete was sitting in bed, covers pulled up about half up his bare chest, reading a casebook for work. He looked over the large portfolio to his love, trying to think of some way to explain it. Not in a way that Jackie could ever understand—no, his Jacks was far too stubborn to even try to listen. "We found each other because of him. I have Rose because of him. We have Violet because of him. We still have a UNIVERSE to be happy in, because of him."

Taking a sip of the wine, Jackie pointed with one finger. "Yeah, well, it just is. Do you ever wonder how many problems in the universe he instigated? And he'd just drag Rose right along with him. I thought we were done with that—done with the end of the world. Then you lot go and join Torchwood. There'd BE no Torchwood without that man! He's just… I don't know."

Pete put the file down beside him. "Jacks… every other day you hate him then love him. Just come to bed. There's no point in placing blame. Things are as they are. Just let it be. And at least if we're working for Torchwood, you know you can trust it. Otherwise who knows what government group would have taken it over by now. We'd have worse on our doorstep than Cybermen and Daleks by now if it was left to bureaucrats and politicians." No, things'd certainly be worse off without their involvement. Rose had already put down two invasions single-handedly. Pete wasn't even counting the times they'd go away "on a business trip" to try and short circuit events that appeared to be on the brink of turning ugly. Jackie probably knew it wasn't all boring suits and ties, but it's how she was able to keep her composure after all these years. "Just come to bed."

Jackie continued to stare at the closed curtains. "There's something out there. Violet said she can feel it. THAT is his fault. That's for damned sure."

She liked the sugar-coated version, but Pete knew they didn't have the luxury of pomp in this instance. "And if she couldn't feel it coming? How would that be any better? Then we'd have NO warning. NO chance of mounting defenses. Am I sorry that a seven year old is involved in all of this? YES. Am I sorry that, if she has to be involved, it at least gives us a SHOT?"

Sliding around and putting her feet on the floor, Jackie finished the rest of the glass in a single gulp. Jackie had hoped the Bad Wolf nonsense had been over, back around when the Doctor regenerated. She didn't know Rose had done, exactly, looking into the that vortex. She just remembered that Rose had somehow left those clues for herself. Hadn't it stopped, when she found the answer, though? "You're talking about her like she's not even related, Pete. Like you're trying to separate her in your mind. Is that because you know how things are going to turn out? You know that the 'Bad Wolf' is going to do something to her, that there's no way to change it? Even though that's what you've been promising for two years!"

Pete let out all his breath in a rush of defeat. "I don't know what's going to happen. But whatever's going to be happen is what's going to happen." It wasn't resignation on his part. He was becoming contemplative in his middle age. Everything worked out the way it was meant to; always. "I know there isn't a think in the world you wouldn't do for Violet. I think you should have that much faith in me and Mickey and Rose. I think you have to know that any of us would fight to the death for her—or for you, for that matter. Which means we're going to figure this out. The Earth hasn't been blown up or invaded, humanity hasn't been turned into machines or slaves for aliens, so I think we do a pretty good job, even without the Doctor."

Jackie sat back in the chair again, leaning against one arm rest while she stared at and almost through the heavy brocaded curtains. "The Doctor. Well, I betcha he knows what the hell's going on." Her attitude had suddenly changed toward him. "Violet says Rose is still carrying a torch for him. Which breaks a mother's heart. But, if he were here…he'd know. He'd have it solved in five minutes." 

Actually, Violet said lots of things, now days. After the day she frightened Pete so badly with her declaration of the "scar" running through Torchwood, Rose had gotten her to open up a bit. They promised not to ask any questions—only listen. And every time she said something about the balloon popping, or "it" waking, Jackie wanted to cry. Violet was just a little girl. Why was this happening to her?

Deep down, Jackie knew. It still wasn't fair, though. Violet should have had a normal life, making friends at school and learning and growing up… Instead, the girl was isolated—alone in a crowed of people, most of the time. Violet should have grown up, gone to college, met a nice boy, made fat little babies…

No one in her family could just be NORMAL. Pete with his schemes, Mickey… running off to whole other worlds at the drop of a hat. And Rose. Rose who'd given her so many heart attacks Jackie couldn't believe she was still standing. Off with the Doctor, then off on her little 'business trips' for the Institute. Violet had the deck stacked against her, as far as turning out normal had gone.

This had been dragged out for so long, over a year and a half. Jackie just couldn't stand it any more. It was just always layers upon layers of weird being added. Layers of things that kept making her frightened that she'd have to one day say goodbye. 

Two years was too long to live like this. Why not get it over with? Not that she was looking forward, mind you. But she hated how precariously everything had been perched for that long. Either it was all contrived to drive her mad, or… maybe… it was some kind of preparation. If not for Violet, at least for them.

Getting ready for bed, Jackie crawled in next to Pete, making a decision. "I'll take her to lunch tomorrow. It'll be fun, just us. Get our nails done, eat ice cream…maybe get her some new outfits for school."

Putting his papers on the bedside table, Pete shut off the light, then turned back to her, kissing his wife's head. "I think that'd be just the thing." Maybe not for Violet… but maybe for Jackie.

XYZ

Inside the storage locker, the Doctor sat quite comfortably in a lawn chair. His elbows rested casually on the arm rests, his hands intertwined on top of his chest. Tapping his leg against the metal frame of the foot rest to a tune only he could here, the Doctor's mind continued to gently probe the bruises and stretch marks of the universe with his thoughts. It felt a little strange, as if he were poking himself with a stick. 

He was trying to be patient—but really. The TARDIS had told him nothing. He felt a giant throbbing, itching scar in reality just above him, so he suspected he was back at Torchwood. He'd given up being frustrated with his ship for not… explaining itself. Even after he'd threatened to send it to its room. 

Well, it had worked with the gas mask child. Unfortunately the TARDIS knew he was bluffing. She was keeping him out of the loop, which wasn't very good considering said circuit consisted of exactly two elements; the Doctor, and the ship.

There really was some sort of universal conspiracy against him—nothing had happened for hours. He trusted the ship, with his life, but he'd like to be let in on the little joke. 

Now were two… that wicked little nursery rhyme suddenly made just a tad more sense. No—he hadn't seen haywired behavior like this since… well, back in the day when there were more TARDIS' (TARDI? he should look into that, really). 

The space was pitch, except for the illuminated letters on top of the police box and the glow of the frosted door windows. He looked back at her like an annoyed older brother. "Did you find another TARDIS? Is that what this whole thing's about?" 

The TARDIS network had been most often used as a glorified gossip machine, one that the ships were entirely contented to leave the Time Lords out of. It would explain so much, though. He couldn't FEEL any other Time Lords out there. They existed above time and space, so even if one were hiding at the beginning of time or in another galaxy or even dimension, he'd have felt it. No, that particular tidbit of prophecy had to be about something else. "Well… whoever he is… I hope he's cute. And worth this whole not telling me anything bit. Because if the whole universe explodes because he looks like the Eiffel Tower, I'll be very annoyed with you."

The words "police box" flickered apologetically. 

Cheeky ship—he should have known. There was one more ship out there, probably buried in a thousand years' silt at the bottom of the ocean that was being slowly boiled away on a planet on the edge of a system being engulfed by a supernova. Why? He just seemed to have that sort of luck lately. Of course, what in the world did a ship stuck in silt at the bottom of a boiling ocean have to do with the current state of the universe? A TARDIS couldn't create that kind of phenomenon. 

There seemed to be two entirely separate elements at work. 

But at least it wasn't another Time Lord. He'd only half-dared to half-secretly-hope that his suspicion was true. The ones with many faces must have been the TARDIS network, then. Whatever this thing was, it was coming for the TARDIS? Was THAT why it refused to go to the blank period of time he'd repeatedly been setting the coordinates for? Something still wasn't adding up. 

Besides… deeper down, he knew he'd have remembered feeling one last little lonely Time Lord (other than himself, of course) at the end of the Time Wars. The universe had been so raw, he'd have felt the bare speck of a Time Lord a thousand years' prior, hiding in the womb of a mother who didn't know he was there. The Doctor was, as always… alone. Because even if he'd only felt it for a second—he'd have remembered it. He remembered everything.

Well, except when he was sleeping, or knocked unconscious…

No, a Time Lord wouldn't be able to escape his notice by simply popping up out of the woodwork while he was lying cold-cocked on the floor of a temple in Grantabrutua. He spent MOST of his time conscious, thank you very much, and he'd have certainly felt another Time Lord by now. 

The Doctor had to sigh and laughed. What he wouldn't give for a few memories back in the "zapped with an evil forgetting ray" or just plain old "being unconscious" categories. There'd been the time he'd lost a whole week after he changed into his third self. He'd been lying in a hospital bed having fond dreams about his shoes.

Or speaking of clutching things to himself for dear life… it was no wonder Rose had ever stayed on as long as she did. She'd forced his ninth self to look at family photos, after the incident with her father at the church. He could tell she was hurting, and while he didn't want to get involved (oh he'd been a grouchy prat back then), he didn't want to watch her suffer. So he'd sat on the floor with her, back pressed up against the foot of her bed, listening (ok, half-listening) to Rose go on about her grandparents, and her Grandma Prentis had lost it completely when Jackie and Pete had eloped (and good for grandma, she had the right idea!). 

He must have zoned out and went to his happy place for quite a bit, because he woke up in the middle of the night after Rose bit his ear… HARD, he might add. Apparently, and this was a directly from her, since he'd been too unconscious to know what he was doing or was coming out of his mouth…

He'd been squeezing her arms down to her sides and crushing her torso so tight she'd awakened and hollered repeatedly for him to let go. He'd said "no" very pointedly a few times, and when she'd asked WHY he wouldn't do it, the Doctor had explained that "people were teddy bears too."

Obviously he'd been drugged or something on their last adventure, because, really, what was with the teddy bear thing? He hadn't even been dreaming about them.

Or heavens… worse still, the night after their trip (finally) to Barcelona the planet. He hadn't known about the alcoholic content of the water. He'd had a touch of thirst, and then the more he drank, the more he WANTED to drink…

Apparently Rose hadn't been nearly as "thirsty," and had gotten him as far as the TARDIS control room. This, of course, didn't explain why he'd awakened about twelve hours later with the taste of cotton in his mouth, dressed in entirety with his clothes inside out, including his socks. Unfortunately, this seemed to exclude his Spider-Man Underoos, which were on top of his head. Whatever it was… he'd only hoped that he'd had fun, and that Rose wouldn't laugh too much at him. She'd never brought it up, though. When he finally asked, she stated that he'd been properly attired when she'd dragged him into the TARDIS, and any wardrobe strangeness must have happened AFTER she went to bed. 

It was a lie, and he knew it, but he was thankful she was more interested in helping him save face than in losing control of her bodily functions because she was laughing so hard at what an ass he'd been the night before.

Bless Rose Tyler, the Doctor thought suddenly as he relaxed into the chair and closed his eyes with a small smile. She'd seen him with his pants on his head, and still traveled on with him after that.

XYZ

Rose fell asleep sitting in the rocking chair in the nursery, still fully dressed in her black skirt and now-rumpled white silk top. She'd come in to make sure Violet was asleep at around midnight when she'd finally gotten home from Torchwood, and the girl had been sitting up in bed, staring at the tiny white light on her bed stand. The girl hadn't slept with a nightlight on in years, but she wouldn't let Rose cut it off. Rose tried to settle her back in for the night, but it seemed pretty futile. The girl was determined to lay on her side and stare into the light. 

She didn't want to talk about it, either. Violet just seemed so tiny in the bed, something almost remorseful written across her features.

Rose tried to wait the girl out, but Violet wasn't going to budge. There was a sense of finality about the silence. So Rose began talking. "I know you think we're clueless grownups, that we don't know what's happening…I know some of it. I don't know the details, I don't know how to stop it. But we're working on it."

Nothing from Violet, but she continued on. "I wasn't always a boring suit, you know. Makin' it to the gym three times a week, going to the office picnic. The universe is a big place, sweetie. I think you know that, deep down. And I've seen some of it, with the Doctor." Rose smiled, dwelling on the happier memories of that time. "You were mad about the place with no windows. That wasn't home—he was home. Wherever and whenever he was. I started out in the world bored with it. It's why I have no A levels. I was just… done with school and books. I wanted to get out there and live. So I ended up in a shop. Not much living going on there… There's a lot folding. Well, I guess if you live for folding things, then it's an ideal existence."

Violet was trying to ignore her, but if nothing, the sound of Rose's voice was relaxing her. The girl was still on her side, but her neck wasn't craned so she could see the light any more. 

It was all the encouragement Rose needed to continue. "I guess I had to be there, to meet him though. I think, ultimately, the universe is so much smarter than we are. It knows where we need to be, in order to get where we WANT to be. And boy, did I want to be there. And his 'there' was everywhere. Every time, every place… and we'd just go there. I can't tell you… how much fun it was. Or how much it meant to me.

Things worked out how they did for a reason… that's what the Doctor had told her, during a chance encounter when she'd first come to this world. She hadn't understood it then… that it had been HER Doctor, just a previous incarnation, before the destruction of the Time Lords and the closing of the gates between parallel worlds. 

It seemed so strange and contradictory, that her present Doctor could not pass through, but his past self had done so with no difficulty. But then she realized—the timeline of a Time Lord was the only constant element. It was why, once they'd become part of events, they'd been unable to travel to any closely related points in the future. He'd mentioned once that he had met his other selves on several occasions, but it had always been caused by some weird universal anomaly (sometimes instigated by others, but an abnormality none-the-less). In general, his own timeline was the only constant. She'd met him again for a reason, and he'd met her in a past self for a reason, even if she couldn't figure it out herself. Maybe it was so he'd know that they were meant to travel together. Maybe that's why, when they'd first met, he'd tried to get rid of her so hard—to test the waters… to be sure. Because after that… he'd accepted her presence without a second thought.

"He was smart, he was funny. He genuinely cared. Not just about me—but everybody. Caring about an entire universe has got to be tiring, but it didn't seem to wear him out. And I know, if he'd ever had met you, he'd care about you to. Love you, even. As much as the L word is part of his vocabulary." She knew—he'd been through a lot. Exposing himself that much wasn't something he'd ever really been up for. "He was… magnificent. The funny bits, the grouchy bits… I loved him, Vi. I still do. It's why I never talk about him. It makes mum uncomfortable. Everybody else gets shifty. So I just kept him to myself. All those memories, all that time. But… I guess it's time to talk about him, and remember him. And whenever I think about him, and remember him, I know that everything's going to be OK. Because it always was, with him. Even when things worked out… like this."

She wasn't sure how to explain the dichotomy of her existence—life had been perfect with him. Life was perfect here too. She had both her parents, a job where she made a difference, Mickey had turned out to be a better friend on this world than he'd been back home, and there was Violet—her sun and moon and stars. But he wasn't here. Rose chose not to think about it, because no matter how long she spent on it, she'd never managed to fully process it. 

Still—she had to have faith. Maybe in the universe, ALWAYS in him; there was a REASON he wasn't here. She didn't understand it, but there was a reason she'd spent this time alone, feet (for the most part) planted on terra firma.

She kept talking, even after Violet had closed her eyes. She told the girl about adventures in the stars, adventures on earth… why she'd followed her Doctor to hell and back. The more she talked, the more she felt him near. She'd fallen asleep with his name on her lips, drifting off into the most peaceful rest in the last seven years.

XYZ

Violet's piercing cry snapped Rose awake. She looked at the girl, and knew whatever 'it' was, it had begun. Violet was huddle at the foot of the bed, holding the little light from the night stand defensively. Half the room appeared to be in shadow, the lamp light stopping abruptly just at the foot of the bed. 

The shadow swirled at the edges of the light, slowly closing in on the little girl. Rose rushed for the bed, but hit the edge of the shadow so hard, it knocked her to the floor.

The shadow was thick and growing thicker as it made it's way closer to the girl. 

Behind her, Rose could hear Pete pounding on the unlocked bedroom door, unable to push it open against the force of the darkness.

A tiny wisp of night reached out of the shadow, touching Violet's arms. She tried to pull back, screaming in the pain of the contact, but she couldn't break free.

TBC. 


	6. Chapter 6

Standard disclaimers, yadda yadda. Thanks to everyone who's been so kind with the feedback so far, especially those who've encouraged me to write more Dr Who stuff. Lemme just say… with a warm welcome like this to a n00b who's colloquially challenged…I'm really REALLY encouraged to come back :)

Devourer of Souls

Chapter 6

XYZ

Lemuxarius Filivander…they were a race long gone. All that remained was the ghostly remnant of their collective existence, huddled in a crumbling, dried out husk. Their bodies had become dust on the solar wind millennia before the Time Lords, the Daleks, and their Time Wars.

In order to survive the ending of their time, and the start of the next Race's time, they had become it, and it existed as an ugly amalgam creature, sleeping in the crumbling, splintering shell of it's ship. It had many personalities, many wants and desires, all of which went unanswered in light of its lack of body.

It-who-once-was-They had lost its proper body. Now a fetid mass of flesh, its many minds were its only mobility, its only contact with a Universe that sought to erase the Lemuxarius Filivander. And so the Filivand minds spread out across the galaxies, unable to touch, but able to prod the mind, to blow the winds of change past the ears of any malcontented enough to listen. The wars it had instigated… the rage it had inflamed.

The Filivand would have dissolved into the nothingness for which it had been consigned long ago, were it not for the only uniform want and desire that it continue existing. That want allowed the many parts of its consciousness to converge upon itself when the tides of the universe swelled, and it would feed. It would draw in the Universe itself, the power jolting and reanimating it's disintegrating flesh and reinvigorating its mindless mind.

It had not instigated the Time Wars. Having long ago lost any sense of real intelligence, it could not think beyond knowing that a war among the principal agents of its' continued existence would surely lead to starvation and death. Oh, they had been a proud people, and they'd been reduced to a collective existence on the outer rim of what was and could be.

They thought they should die. They thought they should dissipate like breath on a glass. The Time Wars had reduced the number of those upon whom it could devour to one.

Then there was the other. The other, on another plane entirely. Oh how good it would be for all the Filivand parts to be restored. The other would be a bridge—a magnet attracting its distant part. The bridge between the one, and the other would be a conduit for the travel across the raging river. Pulling itself together from all the planes would reduce the energy required to sustain it. It had subsided on the edges of existence for so many millennia, it could find some new way to continue being. The Universe insisted its time had past. The Universe did not know the stubbornness of Lemuxarius Filivander, creature of the first races and wanderer of hidden domains. The Universe would one day see a time when the Filivand did more than subsist on the souls of lonely Time Lords.

But first…the child. The child who could see the threads of the planes, could see how they were tied together. The child was to be the conduit. The Lemuxarius, the devourer of souls, would steal away along those threads. HE was waiting on another plane—he whom the Daleks feared. HE would sustain them.

It-who-once-was-They had roamed free for so long after devouring an entire generation of the Time Lords offspring would find a way to make HIM last.

XYZ

The sound of Violet's cries clawed at Rose's soul. She couldn't reach into her leather bag next to the rocking chair quickly enough after she hit the ground. Digging inside, she grabbed a cold metal canister, pulled the pin, then lobbed it through the thick, suffocating darkness to the foot of the bed.

Time slowed as it passed through the air. It seemed like she'd lived three lifetimes before it hit the ground, another two before it went off.

Shielding her face, her eyes still burned from the flash that ignited.

And by the time her vision cleared… it was gone and Pete had fallen through the doorway, weapon in hand.

Rose scrambled to the bed, scooping up Violet. The child was holding with one hand the arm that the shadow had touched. Beneath Violet's fingers, Rose could see that the whole forearm was red.

Violet cried and sputtered as Pete pulled the hand away from the slight burns. "Any longer, and she'd be fried," he grumbled.

Rose rocked and hushed the girl, swearing on anything that would stand still long enough that everything would be ok.

Jackie and Mickey met them at the door, as they were rushing out of the room.

Before her mother could even panic or swear, Rose sent the woman for a wet cloth. As soon as Jackie was off doing that, she turned to Mickey. "I need you to go on ahead of us to Torchwood. I want every light in the place on. EVERY one of them. I need the storage floor opened and room eighteen unlocked."

Mickey only hesitated a moment to brush the thick tresses back from Violet's forehead. "Don't worry, kiddo. We're gunna get this thing." His eyes met Rose's and she knew he didn't believe it. Neither said anything, and a heartbeat later, Mickey turned and ran for the garage and his bike.

Rose could hear him roaring away from the house even before they made it down to the front door. Pete didn't needs instructions—he'd already gone for his keys and pulled the door opened in front of them. He held another canister like a talisman, but nothing happened as they passed through the threshold. The flood lights were on; they had safe passage to the old jeep.

After the initial shock wore off, Violet was reduced to ragged gasps as a few remaining tears slid down her flushed round cheeks. Rose's heels crunched on the gravel and she almost went down on her backside a few steps from the vehicle. Pete grabbed her arm silently and grabbed her arm, painfully dragging her into the jeep.

The air grew heavy and Violet stiffened in her arms. "Set it off! It's coming back!"

It wasn't back, it was there, and it was determined to suffocate them.

XYZ

The force of the pressure on the universes bowled the Doctor over in his chair. Still sitting in it, he rolled over himself when the back of it hit the cement floor. Somewhere above him the scar in the universe had begun to pucker and sweat, dripping ectoplasm through the ventilation system. He didn't need to see it—he felt it, and smelled the burnt ozone mixed with olive oil smell that heralded the bleeding of a super-reality.

In the thick, unbearable darkness of the locker, the Doctor looked back at the TARDIS. "A helpful hint would go a long way, here."

He felt like he was a fireman, waiting to catch a baby from a burning building, like at the circus.

The thing was, every time clowns were involved, it was never funny.

XYZ

The second flash grenade pushed it back, but hadn't stopped it. The darkness dissipated long enough for Pete to start the vehicle and Jackie to throw herself into the front seat, cloth and first aid kit in hand.

Jackie slammed the door shut. "What're ya waiting for?" she asked Pete.

Taking off down the drive, gravel kicked up and the tires spun on the rocks. Almost at the edge of the property the car began to slow as the darkness descended again. Pete had the petal down to the floor, and it was like running in a dream—no matter how fast or hard you run, it's like slow-motion and the object of your fear is gaining.

Rose tried to shield Violet with herself as it began penetrating the jeep again. A little help would be nice.

XYZ

The Doctor stood in the enclosed space, staring up at the roof of the locker, hands on his waist and his brow furrowed deep in thought. Oh yes, it was happening…and he was standing right under it. Whatever baby was going to fall out of that burning window… he was going to catch it, and his ship knew it.

He'd felt it again, that tearing at the edges of the scar. But there'd been something else. It wasn't something trying to push through… a thread and been pulled out of the forgotten heap that used to be the tapestry of time and space. It was truly fantastic, considering the tapestry had all but disintegrated at the end of the Time Wars. This earth existed on a tiny, dry-rotted swath, and so did any and all other existing realities, and now there was one tiny tendril connecting this faded-out scrap to some other one.

The Doctor didn't believe in coincidence; he knew exactly which reality was being connected to his own by that slender thread. The realization seemed to take hold slowly of what this was, and what it meant. "Oh yes!" He absolutely couldn't believe it. It was too good, too easy and too simple (universe-exploding thing aside) to be true.

Spinning around, he grabbed hold of the left front corner of the TARDIS and kissed it. "You are BEAUTIFUL. Dirty, nasty, secretive… but COMPLETELY BEAUTIFUL."

The ship had absolutely no response. It seemed to be saying… wait and see just how much you love me, after you catch the baby.

XYZ

Violet began wriggling from Rose's grasp. Panicked, Rose tried to contain her, but Violet seemed intent on it. "No, honey, don't… we're going to get out of here. We're going to get out of this…"

Jackie turned around, hearing the panic in Rose's voice. "Violet—what're you doing? Sit down…"

Finally Violet broke free. She scrambled on the floorboards for a moment, then stood up in the small space between the front and back seats. "I know what you're here for!" Violet pointed to Rose with the business side of a thin, metallic cross pen. "And if you don't go, she'll banish you! She's the Bad Wolf, and she can do that!"

Heart in her throat, Rose couldn't breathe. She had Violet had talked a lot over the last few weeks about "It," but Bad Wolf had never figured into the picture. There was also the pesky detail where she no longer had access to the time vortex that had let her destroy the Daleks.

But the darkness paused, considering this. A few moments later, it again drew closer, until Violet wrapped both hands around the pen, poking herself just under the jaw with it. "Fine. She was a crappy wolf anyways. But you're not getting through. You're not using me to get across." The girl's fright had been overcome with an anger which lay just beneath the surface of her calm, steady voice.

Jackie gasped, and even Pete craned his head around. "Baby…" Jackie yelped, reaching over the seat.

Pete pulled her away, causing his wife to punch his arm as hard as possible. But there wasn't anything they could do. They couldn't drive it away with light, they couldn't out-run it. As much as it killed him—this was Violet's call.

Painfully aware that he was letting a seven-year old fight the monsters alone, Pete looked Jackie in the eye and gave a tight shake of the head 'no,' when she tried to reach into the back seat again.

The thing had stopped, contemplating its problem. If its "conduit" died, it'd be hard-pressed for a soul to devour. Rose punched the back of her father's seat. "GO!"

The car flew forward with the temporary distraction of its major impediment. Further down the road, the dark veil lifted, at least for the moment.

They were all afraid to breathe, terrified it would come back. But for now… nothing was happening.

After they got onto the main road, Rose wrapped her hands around Violet's, gently pulling it from her neck, then prying those white little fingers off of the pen. Vi's hands had been trembling, she'd been clutching it so hard. "It's gone for now," she reassured the child.

Rocking the girl a bit, Rose brushed the hair from her forehead, her own heart breaking. "You're such a brave girl." Kissing the child's clammy, sweaty forehead, Rose kept peeking down to see if she would cry.

Violet's dry eyes slowly met hers. "It shouldn't be here. It spreads itself out, hiding from the Universes. If the Universes could see it…Its time has passed. If it eats me, it will have enough energy to pull its parts together. It'll be able to go to the other place, and eat HIM."

Shaking her head, Rose looked fiercely into the girl's eyes. "It will not eat you. NONE of us would ever allow that. NONE of us." She tried to smile, trying to let off more confidence than she felt. "And I'd sure as hell like to see that thing TRY to eat HIM. It'll never be able to find all the parts of itself if it even shows itself in front of the Doctor."

XYZ

Giddiness and elation slid off of the Doctor's face as he felt the air around him grow thicker. Not all of it, just strange pockets. A single life-force in all of those pockets, but many minds. Capable of intelligence, but left alone for so long it no longer cared to think higher thoughts—it only cared to react.

It was hungry. If a soul could salivate… well, it'd smell something like the ozone-and-olive oil wreak that was now condensing on the walls of the storage locker.

As the darkness obscured the light from the TARID, the Doctor's jaw locked. A timeless entity looking for a Time Lord steak was not on his list of really good times. "Oh yeah. You and I are gunna have a little talk about this communication thing," the Doctor whispered, feeling one tiny patch of soul find another as it slowly collected itself.

TBC.


	7. Chapter 7

Standard disclaimers, yada yada yada. Sincerest apologies to everyone for writing the ninty-billionth post-Doomsday fic, and for being geographically disadvantaged. BTW, just finished with Stone Rose today… that's a "special" relationship, y'know. Being someone's lucky underpants.

Devourer of Souls

Chapter 7

XYZ

The building was lit up like Christmas. Still in Rose's arms, she dropped the soothing wet cloth that Jackie had put on the burn when she did so, but Violet clenched her eyes shut, throwing an arm in font of her face as they dashed in the back entrance. She wanted to cry or scream, she wasn't sure which. But she knew neither would help. "It" was finally happening, and crying about it wouldn't make it any different.

Rose ducked into the VIP elevator. Pete stopped at the threshold. "Get her up there. See if Mickey or R & D can think of something to repel this thing besides flashlights and idle threats." He turned around and stepped out of the box.

"Wait--"

Pete shook his head. "Someone's gotta call the guard station, or you're going to end up getting shot for your trouble."

Jackie reached past the door as it began to close, sliding inside. The doors slid shut and Rose looked at her mum, her mum who wanted nothing but an ordinary life and didn't take well to danger or "adventures."

"What?" Jackie cocked her head at her daughter. "You're going to need this." Gently pulling Violet's arm from around Rose's neck and untangling it from the mass of blonde hair, the woman wrapped the burn in the cloth again. "There. That's better, isn't it?" She held up the medical kit. "And you're gunna need this too. Pete doesn't need me at the guard station."

Rose smiled warmly. It was all the comfort in the world to know her mom was with them now. Whatever was happening, the "Bad Wolf" and the "special child" wouldn't have to face the darkness alone.

Trying a fourth setting on his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor tried to keep the things from finding each other and joining up. They were tiny little buggers, but they didn't need to get any bigger. Their controlling consciousness seemed to be nowhere in sight, but if these things were finding all their long –lost parts, and reforming right here… they, too were waiting for the baby to fall out of the burning window.

A nasty sound emitted from the sonic device, but the things didn't even hesitate, they just continued roaming in and out of the locker, searching for all the bits of themselves.

One last setting change, and he moved up to the door, pointing the screwdriver at the locking mechanism. "At any point in time now," the Doctor told his ship.

The light on top flickered twice and went out.

The Doctor craned his neck, making a face at the TARDIS. "What in the hell is THAT supposed to mean?"

He apologized silently to all of his past and future traveling companions—they must have wanted to roast him alive for being cryptic all the time. He certainly didn't appreciate being on the receiving end of it, and especially not from his ship.

_SHE is coming. It-Who-Once-Was-They comes. The Stepping Stones have appeared. _

The Doctor'd never figured his TARDIS as that type of gal, so he doubted "she" was the other ship. The stepping stones had appeared—that would have been the tendril between Universes he'd felt pulled. The Universes were swollen now; the single thread could be frayed and natty, and this energy-being could still pass through. There was a static charge between them, like two balloons about to touch.

And he was stuck waiting in a storage locker with a cryptic TARDIS.

Groaning, the Doctor kicked the metal door half of a dozen times, releasing the frustration of willingly keeping himself in the dark, enclosed space while feeling the charge building between the two worlds. If the universe didn't explode, the walls between those two realities might melt together.

The Doctor was a Doer, not a wait-and-see-how-it-all-turns-outter. Instead of solving the whole melting of realities destruction-of-space-and-time thingy, he was waiting, preparing to catch something that scared the living bejeebus out of the Time Lords so bad they had to erase all mention of it…with a big fluffy pillow. Maybe he should make it some tea for when it arrived. Maybe they could have a nice chat, before the thing ate his especially yummy Time Lord soul.

_She is coming._ She who?

And yet, he dared to have the teeniest tiniest seed of hope. He'd probably end up scolding himself later when the universe was destroyed and he was sloshing around like cold oatmeal in the belly of the beast, but he was stupid enough to hope that it was Rose.

XYZ

Mickey lowered the ray gun he was playing with and glared right back at Pete. He was getting that look from Pete. The one he used to get from the Doctor. That "What the hell is wrong with you?" look.

Shaking his hands in frustration, Pete looked at the two late night researchers they managed to scrounge up and half a dozen guards with guns. "She got in the elevator ahead of me. I watched her press the button for this floor."

"She didn't come here," Mickey explained anxiously. He didn't understand why it was his fault, but somehow Rose not reaching her destination was. Turning to the nearest guard, he pointed to the computer. "Give us the security logs, ya?"

He turned back to Pete to assure him that they'd find Rose, Violet and Jackie, but Pete was already stocking off, kind of the way Rose did when things weren't going her way. "I want people checking every floor," he called out behind him. "And get some more lights on in here!"

XYZ

The express lift came to a stop and lurched so hard she nearly collapsed with Violet. Jackie had grabbed her arm and kept her steady, though. The kit popped out of her hand and opened when it hit the ground, bandages and packets of ointments and antiseptics spilling on the floor.

Looking at the mess, Jackie let out a curse and a heartbeat later, the lights went off. "I was just kidding, then! Turn 'em back on." Jackie's voice trembled at the last.

Rose reached into the pocket of Pete's green jacket, which she'd wrapped Violet in before they got out of the car. Her hand wrapped around the last canister. "It's ok, mum," she breathed. "We're gunna get out of this."

Lighting up the bluish-white light on her keychain, Jackie rubbed a hand over Violet's head. The girl was biting her lips together, brow rutted in thought. "Yup. We're gunna get out of this." Then she looked to Rose. "HOW are we going to get out of this?"

Hoisting Violet up a little further, Rose tried to come up with a Doctor-worthy plan. "Uh, well, first, you can't sneeze in this place without a sensor going off. They haveta know we're stuck. Which means they've probably already sent someone." Freeing one hand, Rose pulled the little door on the emergency phone open. "See, and I'll call them right now, just to be sure." Was she trying to convince herself, or her mother?

Flipping her hair away from her ear, she put the receiver to her ear. Jackie began kicking the contents of the kit into a pile. "Then I want to take a look at her arm. Why aren't there emergency lights in this thing, anyways?"

Rose hung up the emergency phone. "Right."

"Well?"

In the dim light from the key light, Rose met her mother's eyes. "No dial tone. So, I'm fresh out of explosives," she said calmly. We've got… let's see. Your keys…" She tried to dig her fingers between the shiny metal doors but had nothing to show for it but a scratched up manicure. "Your keys, one more flash can, a dead phone, a jacket, and a cross pen. Does that sum the resources up?"

Jackie shook her head sarcastically. "Honestly. You act like you've never been stuck in a lift before." Reaching into the pile of supplies on the floor, she pulled out an angled pair of scissors. They were blunt, but thin enough to make some headway when she dove between the doors with them and began prying. "And they pay you to save the world and stuff? Really."

"The balloons are touching," Violet whispered. "It knows the balloons are touching. It's low tide…"

Jackie looked back at the girl but didn't stop, she'd made a bit of a crack without breaking the scissors and had driven it in far enough to have the tiniest bit of a fulcrum on one of the door edges. "Well, if that's the case, then come on. Help me out before that thing comes back."

Rose put Violet down, giving the girl a quick peck on the head. "NOTHING is going to happen to you," she promised, digging her fingers in the crevice that Jackie had worked out. Tugging at the top, she managed to get one foot in at the bottom, and pushed in the opposite direction with her leg. Jackie dropped her keys as she got her back against the opening that was now about the width of a book. Between that and Rose's efforts in the other direction, they managed another six or eight inches.

"Great, we're between floors," Jackie grumbled, seeing the floor at about shoulder-height.

Violet scrambled over and got the keys, turning the little light back on. She wasn't staring directly into the bulb, but she was concentrating on it awful darned hard. When Rose stole a glance, it looked like the girl was trying to work Jedi powers or something. "Vi, why don't you shine that over here."

The girl looked up at the two women like she'd just come back from some place else, but did as she was asked. 

Hands on her hips, Rose contemplated the height of the floor above them. The floor below only had an opening of about six inches, and even if someone could squeeze through, they'd drop all the way from the ceiling to the tile below. And they still had the problem of opening the door on other side…

Rose made a mental note to always keep explosives on her. "Well, crap."

Exhausted from the effort, Jackie sighed, leaning against the door frame. "If you can get me up there, I think I can keep my balance."

The look of shock that Rose gave her mother was a missed photo opportunity. "Look, if you think I'm going to let some freaky monster hurt Violet, you've got another thing comin'. So lets get me up there."

Kicking off her high heels, Rose shrugged. "Alright. Lets get you up there, then."

SOMEHOW, after a lot of wrangling, Rose managed to do the whole human stepping stool thing, and got Jackie high enough to work on the door. She handed her mum the now-slightly bent scissors and watched Jackie mess with it. This one wasn't nearly as easy—since the metal frame was curved slightly outward on the edges, there wasn't a space to get hold of. After a few moments, Jackie held onto the frame, her arms growing tired.

Violet stood up and tugged on Jackie's leg. "Lemme try it."

When Jackie turned around to look at the girl, Violet thrust an arm past her, pointing something tiny and U shaped at the door. It lit up ruby red and made a small buzzing noise, then the door released. "Good girl!" Jackie declared, not bothering to question what the hell that thing was, or where Violet had gotten it from. "Boost me up, here."

Trying give her mum a few more inches, Rose spun her head around, glaring at Violet. "Where'd you get that? Did you steal that from the research lab?"

Violet shrugged. It wasn't stealing, so much as borrowing. She probably wouldn't put it back… but stealing was such a dirty word to use.

"Let her be, we'll ground her when this is all over." Jackie's voice was muffled as she got herself through the opening. When she was through, and turning around to help Rose and Violet, the girl lifted the small device again and pressed it.

Before Rose could ask the child what in the hell she thought she was doing, the metal box went into free-fall.

TBC


	8. Chapter 8

Standard disclaimers, yada yada. Unbeta'd. Please see the end for my explanation/desperate cry for help grin.

XYZ

Devourer of Souls

Chapter 8

XYZ

Sitting on the floor in front of his lawn chair, the Doctor made popping sounds with his lips as he ran through all the settings on his sonic screwdriver. So far he'd made the TARDIS doors open and shut on their hinges, set the sleeve of his jacket on fire and made the hair on his head grow a full quarter inch. And he was only at setting 195. His antics seemed to be doing little more than distracting the little murky blobs and making it take them longer to find the bits of themselves, but it wasn't deterring them.

Moving away from the lawn chair, he leaned against the metal door, letting his head roll back and forth against it before trying setting 197. One-ninety-six would cause all the pipes to burst, which'd probably be ineffective against a shadow. Of course, at this point—you'd never know. There was a buzz, and the two grapefruit-sized parts that had been about to join hesitated, then fled from each other. Well, that was something.

Pointing and zapping from his spot on the floor, he tried to keep at them fast enough, but there were a lot of 'em, and they kept fading in and out of the locker.

Bratty ship. You think she'd help or something…

Of course, she was the female of the TARDIS species. Women were trouble, his father told him once. Never trust one, and never look them in the eye, they'll see right through you.

That was it! He had it figured out suddenly, and it gave him renewed energy (he'd been feeling all 900 plus of his years with all this waiting. An hour was longer than anyone should ever have to wait for anything, he decided). Switching hands with the sonic screwdriver and continued chasing the little shadows around the locker with both vim, and vigor.

He'd had it wrong, all this time, and suddenly it all made sense!

Everything was his father's fault!

Yes, that was it exactly. He didn't know what he'd been thinking—blaming the one or two lousy proteins of his mother's DNA that had somehow overpowered his father's dominant Time Lord genetics to make him a broken tinkerer. It was his father's fault! His father had, after all, married the woman.

"Life's just so much better, when you know who to blame," he told his ship merrily. "And no, I don't mean you. Can you believe, everything in the universe is my father's fault? Ya! I'd have never guessed it either." A dark spot dodged his aim and bounced off the TARDIS' front door. "Ya see, he'd go on and on and (and on!) about my tinkering. 'There's officially sanctioned Time Lord Corrective Measures, then there's what you do—meddling. And that kind of meddling's going get you killed—perminantly,' blabla GROWL, then he'd make this ferret face and talk more about acting my station, and I'd stop listening about then…" Ah yes, his precocious adolescence, he'd thought he'd done a sufficient job of burying those times under mundane events, better times, and some tangled Christmas lights, but apparently not.

He chased the dark spot that had bounced of the TARDIS for a few moments. "Yup. All dad's fault. I might be a meddler, but HE MARRIED HER. He married her, and I dare say loved her, because dear me…if his body would have gotten any older, he'd have started growing mold. Otherwise he'da regenerated ions before he turned into Methusala. Nope. He loved her." Zapping the little bugger, he chased it out of the storage locker and began chasing the others.

It had always been something he'd wondered about. They'd always seemed so distant, and his father had always talked so condescendingly about 'the humans,' and 'the women,' but his dad was a big pile of mush, under all that Gallifreyan pomp. If his own behavior was any indication, the Doctor knew why his father had been so distant and negative—he was afraid. Of getting his heart broken.

Damned humans and their damned itty bitty life spans. You think they'd work on that, or something. They used ten percent of their brains and died out before they even figured out what they'd been put there to do by the universe.

He wondered what Rose was doing. She'd certainly found her place in the universe early on in life (comparatively speaking). First with him, then with the other Torchwood. Whatever she'd ended up doing, she'd been good at it. Stashed in his breast pocket was his slightly-psychic paper. Stashed behind that paper was a card he'd kept for two regenerations now. Pulling it out with one hand, he continued chasing the nasties around the enclosed space.

Before he even looked at it, he knew what it said. "Rose Tyler, Senior Analyst." Yeah, Rose was doing just fine. He and Ace had run into her who knew how many years before. Truthfully, she'd looked so much more adult that first time that he hadn't even recognized her at the shop when he'd told her to run for her life. And when she didn't go away, no matter how hard he'd tried to force her… well, he knew that his other-self had been right when he'd given her that advice—he WAS lucky to have a friend like her.

Looking down at the yellowed card in the dim light, the Doctor noticed another business card clinging to it. The same paper, but the print was thick and sticking to the back of Rose's business card. Lowering the sonic screwdriver, he used his other hand to pry it free, reading the name on the other card.

Oh Man. Oh man, oh man… there weren't even words. He, who had an extensive vocabulary of the universe's finest curses, expletives and exclamations, had absolutely no words for what was printed in heavy blue ink on that card.

Rose had been a teenager when they'd met, and not much older than that when they'd had their ways parted for them by an unkind universe (or two). But she'd been the other part of him. He'd spent the last seven years hopping around, looking for his lost leg. He'd tried a few prosthetics, but none of them were that part of him. He had to just go on and admit it. And that sort of attachment was not his mother's fault. That was dear old dad, who'd fallen in love with a human then had spent the next fifty to sixty years preparing himself for the part where she'd leave him—and it had made the codger miserable.

But it was ok to admit it, he informed himself. It was completely alright to admit that he was his father's son and had gone and done a stupid thing like loving Rose Tyler. The card told him so.

There it was in glistening raised letters—hope. He'd never, ever in his life had been so happy to see "Bad Wolf" written anywhere. But there it was—Bad Wolf Comics and Collectables, London.

Maybe, sometimes, it really WAS as simple as that—just sitting and waiting. His TARDIS had somehow known better—that if he'd known what was happening, he'd have somehow managed to muck it up for himself. Oh no. The universe was finally throwing him a bone, and all he had to do was keep reality from exploding in order to get it.

Would it be, he wondered, inappropriate to dance a jig?

XYZ

Jackie turned around on her hands and knees, prepared to reach back down for Rose and Violet when the elevator car release and fell in a noisy lurching of metal. She screamed out, terror turning her insides out, but it slowed suddenly and stopped. She couldn't see how far down, the bright lights from the hall ended abruptly at the three-foot opening. It hadn't dropped far, though.

Hand on her chest, trying to keep her heart inside, Jackie got to her knees.

"What happened?" Pete's hand was under her elbow and he helped her to her feet. "The lift stopped. We got the doors opened… then it just dropped." Her voice was a bit distant, like she didn't believe what had just happened.

Pete grabbed both of her arms, looking her square in the eye. "Was that thing in there with them?"

Jackie shook her head, pulling Pete's hands off of her arms. "I don't think so. I don't know why it stopped the lift, then didn't just come in—it was so dark."

Grabbing her hand, he dragged her towards the steps. "You'll excuse me if I don't trust those things suddenly." As they neared the first landing, Pete had a thought. "Maybe it was trying to separate her from us. The antelope from the rest of the pack."

Pointing on ahead, Jackie shook her head. "Lets just get down there. For God's sakes. Where's all your fancy security staff?"

XYZ

The squeeling metal box slowed just a bit, then came to a complete stop. Well, the box stopped—Rose didn't. She ended up flat on the ground before the blink of an eye. The car was now level with another floor.

Violet pointed the red glowing device at the door, and it opened. "Well… lets get on with it," Violet said vacantly, walking past the heap that Rose Tyler had become.

Before the girl could affect her grand escape, Rose grabbed the child's blue and pink pajama bottoms. "What was THAT for?" Slowly, Rose staggered to her feet.

"I just wanted to make sure she was safe." It sounded perfectly logical. Except it was coming out of the mouth of a seven year old welding a cross pen and a sonic stable remover. "C'mon. There's something we need here."

Rose looked out into the hall. This was the floor her office was on. "Alright, kiddo. What's your grand plan."

Violet took the proffered hand. "Don't have one. But we need the key."

The elevator door closed behind them. Rose looked around to make sure they weren't in immediate danger before crouching beside the girl. "Oh honey. I'm so sorry how this is going to turn out." Seeing the haunted look in the child's eyes, it was apparent that Violet knew just as well as Rose did how this had to end.

The only thing Rose hadn't managed to work out, was WHY?

Violet looked intensely into her eyes and to Rose, it felt a little soul-baring. "I wanted to be stuck with you forever. I wasn't ever going to run away and join the circus, or go to college, or anything." The little girl's lip trembled. "Which is why I'm gunna cry. When you say you can't come with me."

That was enough to make ROSE cry. "We don't know that yet. We don't know that anyone's going anywhere."

A shadow moved at the other end of the hall. "Mickey?" There was no answer. "Dad?"

Suddenly the shifting shadow separated from the wall and poured toward them. Without thinking, Rose grabbed Violet around the waste and hauled her package into the corner office as quickly as possible. Slamming the door shut, she turned on all the lights. Looking around frantically, it took Rose a few seconds to put Violet safely in her oversized desk chair, Rose began punching the codes on the safe.

Reaching out onto the desk, Violet snagged a letter opener as well, and slid it into the folds of the giant jacket she still had wrapped around her.

As Rose began opening the inner cage, she glanced at the girl in the chair. "God. I still have so much I wanted to tell you." If she dwelled on it, she'd break down. She had to push this moment to the back of her mind, where her final moments with the Doctor lived. "I don't think I told you enough times—I love you. You're the greatest, funniest little creature in the whole world." She pulled the box out, removing the TARDIS key. In an after-thought, she also pulled out the medallion that had concealed the key for so long. Inside her desk was the shoeless that had broken off of her sneaker yesterday. Stringing the key in the medallion and then slide it onto the shoelace, then tied the ends in a knot and slid it around Violet's neck.

Tearing opened the office door, Rose stopped when she slammed into it—the wall of shadow. Slithering non-hands reached out of the gelatinous darkness and pulled her into it.

Violet's scream was the last thing she heard in the impenetrable darkness. The only thing worse than the sudden silence was the burning that the thick darkness caused. It's strength had waxed and waned, but it was now a fully-realized ghost.

Leave her alone, she wanted to tell it. She's a little girl. She's done nothing to you.

_We hunger._

Could she actually communicate with it? Was there still a chance that this would not end badly? Well, she had managed to negotiate a treaty to keep this version of Earth off of this version of the Slitheen's dinner menu.

What do you want? Maybe we can get you what you want, without you having to hurt a little girl.

She couldn't get anything else from the simple, primal and conflicted consciousness. Other than it seeming to only agree with one thing amongst it's many parts; Violet's soul would let it travel to another universe, to collect the rest of its parts. It knew she'd once been the Bad Wolf. In fact, it was disappointed; the energy that might have been derived from a human who'd still had the time vortex inside herself would have been enormous. It would have forgone the Time Lords, if that had been the case. Devouring the time vortex would have ensured it's ability to inspire chaos throughout the planes of existence for all of time.

But this girl… no, this girl was a stepping stone. First the girl, then the journey. Then the Doctor. It would make the Doctor last. Oh yes, it'd do that by using him to absorb the vortex.

You're not taking over the universes by stepping on the body of a little girl.

_You have no say._

Suddenly, it became much harder to breathe as the weight of the darkness pushed down on her chest and constricted her throat. She's just a little girl, Rose wanted to say. It's not fair to do this to a little girl.

Then she saw it, felt it—all the children. It had consumed an entire generation of Time Lord children, without remorse. She could feel it—the sorrow of the parents, the self-loathing at what they'd wakened. And all the children—for twenty years, simply absorbed out of existence. She could hear their cries, feel their skin burning…then nothing. Nothing but their parents' sorrow.

_I will defeat you,_ Rose informed the darkness as the last bit of air escaped her, and she could not draw in another breath. _If I don't, then the Doctor will._

And that was her last thought before unconsciousness—hope that the Doctor would send this thing to back to hell, where it had come from.

TBC

My one usual beta is not familiar with Dr Who and my other's at werk. And when he's not at werk, he's just being growly and annoying and won't pay attention to me, or he picks on me for typoing simple things. Ahh yes, love. A many splendored something or other. Anyways… I'm In Search Of (queue Leonard Nemoy and the creepy music) a beta if there's anyone out there. Mostly I need spelling/grammar (sometimes auto-fix zaps me, or I have a "senior moment" and forget to finish a sentence, lose important words, etc), someone to occasionally bounce ideas off of, and tell me if it's plausible in the Whoverse, or if I'm smoking crack, and basically be a continuity jerk when it comes to past serieseseses (it's been so long for most of it, the stuff I HAVE seen is all a jumbled mess in my head). Oh yeah, and beat inappropriate colloquialisms and weird regional phrasing out of my vocabulary. I've lived in several places where everyone talks real special-like, and I often type the first thing on my mind instead of running it through the colloquio-filter (It's a like a Brita filter, but doesn't work on swear words or lead).


	9. Chapter 9

Standard disclaimers. Thanks to Erica for the quick beta.

Devourer of Souls

Chapter 9

XYZ

Violet's first cry was one of terror, when she saw the thing envelope Rose, dragging her into the hall. Her second was of anger. This thing was using someone to get what it wanted out of her. It knew the offer she'd make before she made it, and that made her so angry.

The feelings of pain and angry, empty sadness poured into her as the Lemuxarius Filivander showed them what had become of the children, when last it woke. In the gelatinous darkness, floating there, hair waving around her, was the only person who'd ever understood Violet. The person who was about to die, if she didn't say the words the Filivander wanted to hear. "If you let her go, I'll take you to him," she said loudly. "If you let her go, I'll take you where you want to go." She swallowed. "Then…" her voice dropped to a mere whisper. "Then you can devour me."

There was a pause as the unintelligent intelligence considered the offer.

Violet bit her lips together, drawing in a deep breath before she continued. "I want her…her…alive." Violet had to keep in mind—SHE had the advantage here, and she needed to talk like she did. "I want her alive. And you want to go to the other place." She still wasn't clear in her mind as to where that place was. It seemed to be just like this place, but it felt so impossibly far away. "Well? You can kill her then me, and barely have enough power to get where you're going, or you can let me take you there."

She thought back to the one time her mum had let her ride on Mickey's bike. They'd been going some place fun, outside the city, and they'd almost been there when they'd stopped to help some kids on holiday from school who'd grossly underestimated the distance to the next station and grossly overestimated the amount of fuel in their tank. She thought they'd looked like clowns, unpacking six kids from a two-door car. That wasn't the point of the thought she was trying to project to the shadow, though. The point she was trying to make—did it really want to find out that the soul of one little girl wasn't enough fuel before it got to wherever it was going?

Suddenly, the darkness let its prey fall to the floor.

Tears slid down Violet's cheeks as the mass swirled about her, its touch hot like brushing up against the oven. It would have burnt her alive, if it didn't need something. Managing to walk forward a few steps past the threshold of the office, Violet knelt down beside the limp figure. She could feel the body was alive, but the mind was sleeping. "Wake up," she said simply. "It's time to get up now."

The shadow shoved at her, and Violet almost lost her balance. "I don't know who HE is, or how to get there. So you're going to have to wait," she told it angrily. "You wanted to separate us. You wanted us all apart." It meant that it knew her family was dangerous. Her family, after all, went on "business trips." Violet's lips wrinkled in disgust. "For a stupid beast that can't even think, you're sure a clever one."

She didn't know who "he" was, the man that this creature feared but desired, but it was the same one she'd seen in her waking dreams, the ones that pressed in on her head, the one from the house with no windows and such a tiny door.

He didn't have a real name, not that the grownups would call him. The Doctor was far worse of a name than her own. Violet was an expert in things no one should name their children; she got picked on in school mercilessly for being named after a plant. Whos name is just a title? And if he was anything like the doctors at Torchwood—she certainly didn't want to have anything to do with him.

The thing of it was—she was out of ideas. Oh, to be older and be able to think up plans and schemes and ways to save the day…or even just the person who meant the most in all the world to her… But she wasn't, so she had to rely on this "Doctor" person. He was a mystery, a wild card she couldn't even imagine, no matter how hard she tried, but he was the only hope she had.

XYZ

When Rose opened her eyes, three things became apparent. One, she wasn't dead. It was kind of sad, but she'd developed an entire system of checks after all this time, for waking in weird circumstance. There was the living/dead check, and the "all the limbs" check, which she'd seemed to pass on both counts easily enough this time.

The second thing she noticed was Violet standing over her, a look of concern about her that was well beyond the child's seven years. Lastly, there was the shadow. It was swirling behind her impatiently—but it was waiting. "I have got to go now," she said quietly.

Pushing herself to a sitting position, Rose dragged one leg under her, preparing to get to her feet. "What?"

Tears leaked out of the girl's eyes, sliding down the predetermined paths already marking the girl's cheeks. "I…I promised It. If It let you go… I'd take It to HIM. That Doctor. Whoever he is. I told It that you could tell me."

Rose's vision was obscured by the wetness building there. She'd be a waterfall in a moment, which would do neither of them any good. Swallowing back her emotions, she got to her feet. She needed to think of something. "Ok. If that's what we're doing, then I'd better get my badge, so we can swipe into the warehouse…"

As she made for the open door of her office, the black air parted like the Red Sea, then closed behind her again. A weapon… a weapon… Why didn't she ever look at the military applications stuff up close and personal? What she wouldn't give for a ray gun, or a blowtorch right about now. Heck—the Doctor would have saved the day with a toothpick and a banana. What did she have? Reaching into her pencil tray, she couldn't even find the letter opener (as if that would somehow help in a time like this).

Grabbing her badge, Rose quietly tripped the silent alarm under her desk. A little backup would sure be nice.

XYZ

Pete was trying to work it out with the security team to find some way to circumvent the electrical system on the 11th floor. This was the one with Rose's office, the one that was suddenly locked down, therefore they had to be here. Unfortunately, the place was sealed off entirely, including the ventilation systems. The fire doors could also withstand a considerable amount of weapons damage, so they weren't even able blast through.

From a few yards away, Mickey shook his head, tired of waiting for something to happen. Grabbing the largest weapon he could find, he got some bungee cord and as many flash grenades as he could fit in his pockets. Making sure no one was watching (because if they saw him, they'd stop him, undoubtedly), he tied off both ends of the cord, one to himself and the other to the nearest stationary object, and then blasted a hole in the nearest open window. As everyone spun around to see what the commotion was, he jumped. Mickey was tired of waiting for everyone else.

The pendulum effect brought him swinging back towards the building, only a floor below. Before he made contact with the glass, he blew it out with the gun. These things had a limited charge, and he'd just fired it twice in a row. He had, maybe, three more shots. If the thing had a full power supply.

Oh well, if not, then he'd have a really, REALLY big club on his hands.

As soon as he got to the hall near Rose's office, he ran into it. The darkness seemed so much heavier than it had been before. Hoping for the best, he pulled the trigger.

XYZ

The darkness dissipated with the sound of the explosion. At the other end of the hall, Rose saw Mickey with an energy cannon, scattering the darkness. Another shot and they had a clear path to him.

Not waiting for an invitation, Rose snatched up Violet and ran.

They got to Mickey's side, and he fired another shot for good measure. After this, the dark clouds tried to reform, but they didn't seem to have enough umf.

Diving for the stairs, they opened it from the inside and the security squad poured in with guns raised, before they could get out. "Anything with energy and light," Mickey yelled to them. "The plasma gun seemed to slow it down."

Without waiting to see how it turned out, he followed Rose and Violet up the steps.

Five floors later, they made it to storage. "Now," Mickey huffed, out of breath. He didn't envy Rose though, she looked like she was going to die, having dragged a seven year old up that many flights of steps. There were just some things Stair Master never prepared you for. "You wanna explain to me why I opened this floor up and turned every light in the place on?" Of course, Mickey knew that if Rose didn't want to tell him, she just wouldn't.

Rose's brow furrowed. "That thing wants the Doctor. That's what all this is about. And it thinks it's going to get there through Violet. But it's got another thing coming, if it thinks that."

Putting the girl down, she dashed in stocking-feet through the rows store rooms and lockers. They'd moved the damned thing, it figured.

Coming to a halt, she slid about three feet when she saw Violet pointing to a locker several rows back. Not taking time to doubt the girl, Rose gestured for Mickey to follow, then went over to the locker.

As Mickey charged after with Violet in tow, his radio crackled. "The separated parts are finding each other—we're barely slowing it down." There was some crackling on the line, and then another voice cut on. "They're moving up, repeat, they're all moving up--"

The gate on the front of the locker began slowly rising after Rose punched both sets of authorization codes needed to open the glorified storage room.

Mickey shook his head as he saw the ugly pewter urn that haunted his dreams, looking from Rose to Violet, then back to Rose. "Oh no you don't."

Rose didn't back down at his glare. "Mickey, I left the clue for myself. I must have known this thing wouldn't stop until it had killed her. It killed ALL of them, Mickey. ALL the Time Lord children—an entire generation of them, thousands of years back…and then it slept. If it gets her, it gets to the Doctor. If, for whatever reason (and I have complete faith in him), he can't defeat it—it devours him. And if it does, it can access the time vortex. Do you really want this thing being able to travel through time, devouring anything it damned well pleases?"

The gate reached the top and clicked. Several large blobs pealed up through the floor. Mickey began digging for the flash grenades, now that his gun was out of ammo. "And how the hell is that ugly thing supposed ta help?" When he lobbed the flash canister at the largest group of dark shapes, they all covered their faces as quickly as possible.

The light died away and the shadows hadn't broken up further, but the three large globs hadn't met up yet either.

Rose began feeling around for the keyhole. "I'm getting her out of here, Mickey. If she isn't here, then it has nothing to devour to make it across to the Doctor's world."

Finding the keyholes, she gestured for Violet to use the key on the string around her neck, to which the child obliged. "The universe is a big place," Violet said by way of some strange explanation. "It's ok, Uncle Mickey. I'll be back."

The kid said it with such simple honesty, Mickey almost believed her. "Great," he said, tossing another canister to the edge of another part of the shadow creature. "So what the hell are we doing with this thing?" It'd been two years, they'd run every test in the book, made up a book full of a new ones, and didn't know what it was, or what it was for.

The concave outer door swung open and on the inside, he saw the pristine white interior of a TARDIS. It was smaller, cleaner and a bit 'retro' looking, but there was no doubting it; that was a TARDIS. The whole bigger on the inside thing gave it dead-away. "We're doing exactly what we were told I was going to do."

"The Bad Wolf is going to send me away," Violet said in a far-off voice.

Mickey made a face. "No. Rose, there has to be some other way."

Rose turned back to him, and her face seemed as vacant and hard to read as Violet's. They'd been happy here. Why was the universe breaking them up like this? "Mickey, if we don't send her somewhere that IT isn't, then it's going to kill her. Plain and simple."

Jaw clenched, Mickey hurled two more light grenades. It was getting closer. Two of the parts had reformed. "And what's going to stop it from following her?"

Rose put her hand on Violet's back, guiding her into the ship. "I am. Me and the Doctor." With resolve and confidence, she moved to the central controls, not looking back. "Buy me a minute or two, yeah?"

He didn't bother to reply. Pulling out more light canisters, he started looking at the large halogen lights up above. The flashes of light were little more than a distraction. Perhaps he could get a little energy involved…

XYZ

Walking around the console, Rose grabbed a duffel bag off the floor. She ushered Violet to a small nook under the controls. When the girl sat down, she crouched down beside her, wrapping the strap of the bag crisscross around the tiny body. Violet looked impossibly small, sitting next to the large dark blue bag. "This has been sitting in here for a while. I made it up for ya back when the TARDIS and I had a talk. Everything in there should still fit."

They looked at each other with stony faces and dripping eyes. "Don't go."

Rose cradled the girl's face. "I want nothing more in the universe than to stay here with you. But we have to stop it. You know what it did."

Violet nodded once. She'd seen it, felt it. The worst part wasn't the children's souls being ripped from them, or the parents' anguish. It was the satiated contentment that the shadow creature had emanated when it was all over.

It saw itself as just trying to survive. And it was—it was just trying to survive. But it was hurting—killing to do it. And she wouldn't allow that.

Violet hated when her family went on "business trips." Because they weren't business. They were about going somewhere and stopping something bad. She'd hated it for so long—all this weirdness at Torchwood and how different they were—how different she was. It wasn't their fault that they were doing these things. And it wasn't their fault she was being sent away now. She felt like the Grinch (but not in a 'kill Christmas' kind of way). She felt her heart grow two sizes, just then, because she knew the 'why' for all the weirdness. They were helping. They were helping by not letting people—things—hurt other people. Or things.

The girl quickly dried her tears. "It's ok. You're helping. And if it hurts to help… then, I guess we're doing a really good thing."

A flush of sorrow mixed with pride ran through Rose. The storage facility rocked with several explosions as Rose squeezed the girl to her, pressing the child's warm cheek to the side of her head. "You are utterly unbelievable. Truly amazing and fantastic." Rose kissed her forehead, trying press the feel of the child's smooth skin into her memory forever. "We're all so proud of you."

Violet squeezed her back, but didn't hang on for dear life. They separated and Rose got on with setting the coordinates. "I'm trusting you," she told the ship. She'd already placed so much trust in it. "Do what you have to."

Digging in the bag, Violet found a bear that had gone down with the wash, but had never come back up again. Clutching it to her, she also found a thick envelope. "What's this?"

Rose gave her a last pat on the head as the TARDIS shook again and lights flashed outside. Somewhere, Rose thought she could hear Jackie, raising hell. "That's only for the person to whom it is addressed," she said very formally. "Alright. I have to go. When I close the door behind me, hit this button. Then get back down there, because these things can have rocky landings."

"Rose!" Mickey called out, just beyond the TARDIS doors. "It's back together! It's coming--" More explosions. Then nothing.

TBC


	10. Chapter 10

Standard disclaimers, bladdy bladdy bladdy blah. Cows go moo and ducks go quack. Or so the Fisher Price toy tells me. (Nobody reads these things anyways is what I'm saying)

Superdy dooperdy shout-out to new beta, Kates Master. TOTALLY way nicer than Brendan, and didn't pick on me at ALL.

XYZ

Devourer of Souls

Chapter 10

XYZ

Mickey tried to warn Rose, but the shadow enveloped him, cutting off all sound and nearly all thought. For a moment he floated there, caught in a hot, painful darkness, unable to tell which way was up. The air grew thin, then nonexistent, and he felt the thing moving closer to the open door of the TARDIS.

Somewhere beyond the perimeter of the shadow he saw Jackie scream, but there was no noise. Some energy weapons went off, but they weren't doing anything. Reaching into his vest, Mickey pulled out flash canisters and pulled the pins, one after another, pushing them away from him, and then going for the next one as fast as he could move within the darkness.

They ignited a bit too close to him, but in short succession. He was still surrounded by darkness, but it had loosened its grip. He could breathe again. Two more of the security officers were caught in the shadow with him, their weapon fire becoming useless. The darkness loosened a bit on them as well, but it was still not retreating and separating.

Sparks were flying overhead, and Mickey hoped that even if he wasn't there to see it, they'd got this thing. He knew why Rose had been so hell-bent—this thing only had one thing Being surrounded by it was like being enveloped in pure evil.

XYZ

Looking around like she'd lost her keys, Rose reached into the green jacket still pulled around Violet, taking out the last canister. "Alright. I'll buy you some time. I'm not sure how yet… but I'll do it." She needed to find some way of keeping this thing from jumping into the time vortex after the TARDIS. A distraction… something…

Violet shrugged off the coat. "I think I know how." Inside the pocket Rose hadn't checked, Violet pulled out the metal letter opener. "But… you're not going to like this."

Rose's first instinct was to scold, but the feeling left her quickly when she saw the girl also take out the sonic staple remover. The petty theft thing had all been for something, even if neither of them had known it.

Clambering onto a plate covering part of the control panel, Violet wrapped both hands around the opener, and then jammed it into the crack between the panel and the plate. Rose couldn't believe that she'd managed to hit the crack much less lodge it in there, with the amount of force she'd put into it. "Ok. Now hold this."

Rose didn't question, she simply did. She didn't know how she felt about predestination, but she was learning to deal with 'fate,' and so, at least for right now, she had a part to play. Touching it, she felt just how hard the little girl had jammed it in there. "Ok, Vi. What've you got planned?"

In the silence outside, sparks were flying. Whatever they were going to do, they had to do it now. Rose couldn't see much, but from what was visible, it was taking increasing amounts of energy and light to distract the thing, and soon they wouldn't be able to keep it from the ship's door.

Without waiting, the girl lifted the chunky little staple remover, pointing it at the letter opener. "It says its OK to do this, so, uh, well, here goes." Zapping the letter opener, Violet winced.

Rose felt the surge of energy run through her, like a burning wind. The moment Violet's thumb released from the staple remover, the fire stopped.

Violet smiled as Rose let out a breath, golden energy floating away from her like steamy air on a wintery wintry day. "The TARDIS promised it wouldn't be enough to eat you up." The girl took a deep breath, swelling with pride at the Bad Wolf. "Go get It," the child ordered as she closed the door behind her Bad Wolf.

The Lemuxarius Filivander wasn't going to win. No one else would get hurt, because she and her family said so. Running over to the controls, she slapped the button. Ducking back into her cubby, Violet pulled the jacket around her then slid under the strap of the duffel bag, snatching up the bear again.

Everything was going to be OK. She didn't know how, but everything was going to work out in the end.

XYZ

Jackie screamed when she saw what it was doing to Mickey, yelling at the thing to stop. Up on the edge of it, she was fully prepared to start beating on its hide when Pete yanked her behind a crate.

"And what the hell do you think you're doing?" he asked angrily.

She pushed his hand away from her arm. "Well, it's not like YOUR solving the problem so well."

Pete scowled at her. "Can you just stop trying to get yourself killed? Completely unarmed! You're completely insane."

Standing up, Jackie held out her hand. "Then give me something, oaf." Jackie'd be damned if she'd let this thing win.

Pete handed her the UV flare launcher. "That's my girl."

There was a series of quick flashes coming from within the center of the mass—Mickey wasn't going down without a fight at least. They weren't bright because they were within the heart of the thick shadow, but they did weaken it. "Hit it, now!"

It wasn't rocket science; pulling the trigger was pretty self-explanatory. The pulses came out one after another, lighting up on the edges of the creature, little else happening.

Jackie never ever wanted to be in a position to save the world again, as long as she lived. However, if she were going to be in it now, she'd like to at least have it work out all right.

Suddenly, the darkness pulled away from her, the security guards and Mickey. It began swirling like a tornado in front of an opened storage locker. In the center of the cyclone was a golden light that cut through the shadow's gloom. It walked towards them.

Mickey backed up, nearly stumbling as he ran into Pete and Jackie. "Oh no, Rose. What have you done?"

Hearing the horrible, wonderful sounds of a TARDIS blinking in and out of here and there, Jackie walked towards the shadow a few steps and squinted, seeing suddenly what Mickey was talking about. The Bad Wolf was back, and Violet was nowhere in sight.

XYZ

The Doctor heard it. It was all he could do to keep from busting out of his skin at the cranking, yawing sound. His lost part was coming back!

Unable to contain himself, he spun around on one foot, trainer squeaking on the painted cement floor. "Thankyouthankyouthankyou…" He didn't know where it was directed, his ship, the Universe… he didn't care. He thanked them all!

And as soon as she was there, they'd stop these little demons, and they'd keep the universe from popping, and everything would be as it should be. "Thank you, thank you… Rose Tyler. Rose Tyler whom I'd have gone domestic for." It would have been unbecoming of a Time Lord to squeal, so if anyone asked, he would swear he had no idea what that sound had been, or where it had come from. He felt like the Tinman, getting a heart! All of his parts, at last!

Fading as it came and went and came again, the Doctor beheld, quite possibly, the ugliest time travel device ever conceived. He looked back quizzically at his own ship, questioning it's taste. Of course, if you were the last lady TARDIS in existence, the last fellow TARDIS in existence would start looking mighty good, he supposed. He just hoped their offspring didn't have dad's bulbous head. A functioning chameleon circuit would be good, but anything was better than that lumpy, uneven dome.

A rush went through him, and he felt the most dominant personality of the shadow creature. It was little more than a speck circling the ship, and it'd take some time for it to rejoin the other parts, but some small, important part had managed to escape the other universe, following the TARDIS across the single thread between the worlds, all the way there. It wasn't all the parts that the other universe contained—otherwise he'd be pretty much screwed. As it was, he was "only" in an unbelievably large load of trouble.

But it didn't matter! This thingy was toast, just as soon as they figured out what it was. "Rose!" he called out, looking for the door on this unfortunate and unattractive ship disguise.

Finding the door hinge, he popped opened the completely unlocked (really! Safety first, people!) door of the ship. "Rose…" Grinning and laughing manically, he flung open the door and stopped.

Rose was not in sight. But huddled under the controls was something that left him equally speechless. Stopping dead in his tracks two steps inside the door, he stared with wide eyes and licked his suddenly dry lips. This was…he wouldn't have guessed, and he was having trouble wrapping his considerably large mind around it. Amazing. Fantastic even.

The girl looked up at him, liquidy brown eyes staring up from a tear-stained face, surrounded in a wild tangle of dirty blonde hair.

It wasn't his missing leg. It was some other part of him entirely—one he hadn't known had been missing until just now.

XYZ

The cyclone continued to spin unrelentingly, stirring everything in the room that wasn't tied down. Unconsciously, Jackie edged toward it.

It wasn't like last time, which had frightened Jackie enough, with the glowing and the wind that had constantly seemed to whip about her daughter. This time… Rose looked tired.

Pete grabbed her arm, but didn't try to pull her back. He did seem to draw in a sharp breath, though, when she loudly asked, "Where's Violet?"

The unearthly voice responded, "She has gone. She is safe."

Mickey moved up next to Pete and Jackie. "Then can't you stop it now? If she's safe?" That had been the whole point in this exercise, wasn't it?

The effort of maintaining the cyclone seemed to be taking a toll on Rose—her face contorted as she pulled together the energy to speak. "No. The rest is up to the Doctor now. I will keep it contained until he acts. I have allowed the Dominant Will to travel with the TARDIS. It will fly right to him."

Mickey thought that was a dumb plan—but hey, she was the Bad Wolf. Her hands seemed to be trembling under the strain of maintaining the swirling force surrounding her and her face told of the strain. "I just hope you can hold out that long, Rose."

XYZ

Taking a few tentative steps into the ship, the Doctor smiled, leaning forward just a bit. Maybe an hour wasn't too long to wait for some things. "Well, hello," he said gently. Didn't want to scare the tyke—she looked like she'd already had a time of it. "I'm the Doctor. And who have we here?"

"Hi," the child responded in a voice so soft he could barely hear, but got louder as she went. "Violet—Violet Tyler, sir. I was just wondering…"

The grin spread across the Doctor's face. "Yeah?"

She looked past him. "Can we kill this thing now?"

The Doctor spun around just as the soul-creature poured through the (stupidly left open) door of the ship. "Yeah." He swallowed. "I think we can manage it. But just right now, I'm not exactly sure as to the how."

Aiming his sonic screwdriver at the mass, he pressed a button, and it seemed to pause. This setting wouldn't work long on the creature. It was now enormous.

Which gave him about three seconds to think up a really, REALLY clever plan.

TBC


	11. Chapter 11

Standard disclaimers. Thanks to Erica for betaing most of it. All other mistakes are my fault hehe.

XYZ

Devourer of Souls

Chapter 11

XYZ

In all actuality, it turned out to be closer to 1.5 seconds. Which was still about four less than the Doctor needed to come up with something brilliant.

When the shadow pulsed forward, presumably to suck him in, the Doctor leapt backward three feet. He began changing settings on the sonic screwdriver, pressing the button several times in quick succession before the thing lurched forward again. His back slammed up against the control console and the girl sitting under it scrambled away from him.

Looking to see where she was going, he caught sight of the letter opener slammed between the cover plate and the heart of the TARDIS.

The darkness wrapped around his arm, scorching heat shooting up through him like electricity. Pulling his hand away, he slid back a little further around the circular unit, stopping just behind the cover plate. "And it just let you do that?" he asked the girl, changing settings on the sonic screwdriver.

Holding the bear in front of her for protection, she shrugged. "I dunno. It said I had to let out the Bad Wolf." Feeling the heat of the darkness, the girl curled into a ball under the console.

Eyes wide with surprise, but entirely lacking a better plan, he aimed his sonic screwdriver at the handle of letter opener, carbon now covering the handle, and let 'er rip, just as tendrils of darkness wrapped around the child's arms, pulling them away from her face, causing her to cry out.

It seemed to be seeping into her skin, causing her face to twist in anguish, and the Doctor changed the setting on the screwdriver, praying it'd be enough.

The field of energy that built up between the opener and the screwdriver hissed and sparked as it pulsed a misty, golden light, swirling, drawing the hot, angry shadow-creature towards it.

"OT OH!" The girl cried out, putting her hands over her ears, clenching her eyes shut.

The darkness was drawn to the energy of the time vortex, which was developing into it's own tiny universal force, pinned between the two contact points. It touched the glowing mass and the vortex flashed orange, then pink, purple, blue, cooling to the deepest indigo…

Seeing that the vortex had taken on a life of it's own, the Doctor shut off the screwdriver and watched it for a moment, just a tad transfixed. The vortex and the creature seemed to be fighting for control, almost resembling a dog chasing it's own tail. The Doctor could feel the struggle, it was actually tugging on the ends of two universes as the parts of the creature in the other dimension grew agitated. He could feel it—they were drawn to something equally powerful and couldn't escape its grip, even though the parts longed to be reunited.

They really needed to get out of there.

Holding out a hand to the girl, he hauled her to her feet, grabbing the oversized duffel bag. "We'll just be going now," he told her as they dashed to the door.

XYZ

Violet was dragged out of the ship and across a small, dark space, to a blue box. It was also bigger on the inside than on the outside, and as soon as the door slammed shut behind them, she could tell this was the place that she'd seen in her mind—no windows, brown and metal and organic.

He dropped her hand as soon as they were inside, and dashed to the center mess of wires and tubes. Pushing buttons, the man grew more and more agitated. "Just raise the outer shields! Unless you WANT to be sucked into that thing!"

Well, that was some small comfort. She wasn't the only one that could hear machinery talking to her.

Angrily, the man slapped the same button over and over. "If it were just me, I'd let you be petulant." He looked meaningfully over his shoulder to Violet.

Taking a few steps forward, Violet stopped. "It's not going to leave."

Pausing, the Doctor turned towards her. "She's lonely too."

The Doctor's shoulders fell. "Alright, well, then we need to think of something much more brilliant than anything I've ever thought of before, Otherwise that TARDIS is going to turn inside out, and we're going to get sucked in with it." Looking around him for inspiration, he turned in a circle twice, trying to think. "If I were an incredibly brilliant plan, what would I be?"

Violet shrugged. See, this is why she wanted to be older. To think big thoughts like this. And to watch Rated R movies. "My mum said you were really smart," she tried to encourage.

The Doctor pointed a finger at her. "Your mum! Yes, your mum. She was fantastic. And I knew that the first time I met her, which was really the second time—because I met her before…" The card in his pocket. He'd put the book away for the lady with the chin-length bob while she was on the phone, talking to someone about a teething baby…

"And your mum is absolutely brilliant. Because she's keeping all the other parts of the creature at bay, otherwise, it'd be back together, and we'd both be dead, and that'd be really sad…"

Dig through the folder, dig through them… He put the book away, the book with the flower drawn in the margins, the one on the medallion, the medallion that the child happened to be wearing… "And it'll open if it's meant to open for you…" he muttered, running to the girl. "Mind if I borrow this?"

Without waiting for consent, he lifted the medallion off of the girl's neck, shoe lace and all. "Stay here," he ordered, dashing out the door. It snapped closed behind him.

Violet looked around the ship. "Yeah," she breathed. "Right." She hadn't come all this way to just stay put and be good.

Yanking the handle, Violet couldn't get the door to be opened. "Aww! Oy! Man!" Huffing, she crossed her arms in front of my chest. She had a feeling that the ship listened about as well as she did, in most circumstances. Why was the ship siding with the Doctor on this? "If you let me go, I'll give you a sticker."

The door didn't budge. The air on the ship howled a deep laugh.

All she wanted to do is watch the Filivand get their comeuppance. Oy. Man. Oy.

XYZ

The Doctor stopped just inside the door, looking at the tiny singularity that had developed in the other ship. There was something of an infinite nature about it, pulling the soul of the creature into it, in addition to all the energies created and released by the still painfully raw universal expansion that had left this reality touching the other. He could feel the tension releasing, causing the edges of the two realities to separate. Strangely enough, the tiny thread connecting the two universes didn't snap; it actually managed to stretch slowly and carefully, rising to meet the occasion.

He watched the external pushing of the vortex's golden-pure energy counter-manning the internal draw that had been created by the density of the cobalt and midnight-purple of the single soul and its many consciousnesses. No actual matter was involved, but it certainly looked like a star about to supernova, then collapse in on itself and form a black hole.

The Doctor really, really didn't want to be in here if that happened. That whole part where a ship that was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside imploded, and the tidal wave of energy it tossed out then drew back into itself was really, REALLY unattractive to him. But… well, he did owe his ship.

He needed to time this just right. He needed the phenomenon to continue deflating the universe and taking the tension out of the stretch marks on the edges, cooling down the parts that had formerly been touching other realities. He also needed to keep this thing from flashing out in a teeny tiny supernova, the denseness of soul-energy—not mass—causing the thing to turn inward on itself.

So… yeah. He was in completely over his head.

That kid inside his ship trusted him, however, and he wasn't going to let on that he could do anything other than work miracles, in this particular instance.

XYZ

Violet hiked the sleeve of the enormous jacket up on her arm, the bear still tight in her grasp. "Well, what if he needs help? Did ya think of that? I mean, I can help. I'm helpful. I'm everybody's 'little helper,' you can ask my mum. So come on, lemme out…"

This ship was such a grown-up. Always with the not letting you do fun things thing.

She missed her family, suddenly. Who was going to tell her to behave herself and sit up straight, and tell her bedtime stories? Sure, she could read to herself, and she liked the big novels with monsters and the things that hunted them. But she needed Mr. Bunny Writes a Letter. What if this Doctor didn't have the Mr. Bunny books?

Panic knotted in her stomach. What if he didn't tuck you in? What if he didn't want her at all? What if he got fried or eaten, because she wasn't there to help (her complete and total lack of knowing how to help aside)?

What if he was like the Torchwood doctors? She'd had to look up the word "vivisection," it radiated off of them so badly. He didn't feel like it. He felt like mum had said—home.

Closing her eyes, she breathed in through her nose and out her mouth. Everything was going to be ok. Mum had promised it, the other ship had promised it. And it would be.

With a look around the enormous room, the girl sighed. Somehow… yes, somehow things would be ok. Even in this place with no windows. She wanted to help people, like her family did. It seemed to her… she needed to learn how. Even if it just meant learning how to help the Doctor not get killed or blown up or eaten by vengeful amalgamated spirit-creatures.

Sitting down a few feet inside the door, Violet began looking through the duffel bag. "You win for now," she told the TARDIS.

XYZ

The medallion opened and the Doctor shined the small light on the end of the sonic screwdriver through the narrow opening. It was dark as coal dust, and about as reflective. No telling how far it went down. The Time Lords hadn't used the Relative Dimension technology in non-TARDIS gadgets often. This small of a device was good for little more than being a fake rock with a false bottom for a lost house key… if you didn't know what you were doing.

Fortunately for the Doctor, a full seven out of ten times, he knew. He only kind-of, sort-of knew, but hopefully he could draw some luck out of all those other times where he COMPLETELY knew what he was doing and apply it to this one circumstance.

He'd just found a piece of himself that he hadn't even known about, and it'd be damned inconvenient if he were to botch this.

Changing settings on the screwdriver, he stole a peek at the purple pulsing singularity. The vortex's ability to push outward was waning. It would explode and collapse in on itself shortly.

Aiming at the non-existent inner walls of the golden piece in his hand, the Doctor blew out a breath. What was the worst that could happen? Really. It could explode and blow him up. It could explode then implode, drawing him through a black hole the size of a plum pit, which was that whole proverbial camel through the eye of the needle thing, but it really wouldn't matter much after all his molecules had been crushed to itty bitties.

It could explode outward and the creature could escape the gravity of the phenomenon, and it could destroy him with the energy it had gathered from the vortex (giving it what it wanted—not his most brilliant plan, really). It could tear him to dust on the winds of the universe's memory, and then go after the girl. Oh yeah, then it would be free to travel throughout all of time and space, killing whatever it chose. He needed to think happy thoughts, really.

It could turn both TARDIS' (TARDI? No really—why hadn't this ever been covered in school, he wondered?) inside-out, in which case the little girl inside his ship would only have a few moments upon which to think about what an incredible disappointment he was.

Or maybe, just maybe, this could actually work.

The light of the singularity dulled, and he knew it was about to pulse before collapsing in on itself. It was now or never.

Pointing the open end of the medallion towards the swirling mass of energy, light and shadow, the Doctor turned his head away from the microcosm. Wincing before he even did anything, the Doctor grabbed hold of the carbon-caked letter opener. He supposed he was as good of a conductor as anything else.

The vortex ripped through him as it super-charged the relative-dimension pendant and disrupted the rotation of the energy mass.

XYZ

Violet leapt to her feet, getting tangled temporarily in the duffel bag she'd been digging through. Staggering over it, she managed to stumble to the door. "You HAVTA let me go now!" She felt it, tearing through him, wanting to change him. It was that thing that had come out of the center of the ship, the thing that had made Bad Wolf.

Then, just when she thought it couldn't get any worse, she felt the creature escape the hold of that weird swirl that had been gripping onto it before. The soul of the creature rushed into him and she couldn't do anything at all—other than pound on the doors of the ship and beg for it to take some kind of pity on her.

Tears leaked out the sides of her eyes. If he blew up, she wouldn't have anybody at all.

TBC


	12. Chapter 12

Standard disclaimers, Kates Master and Chef Erica have been wunderbar, oodles of noodles, thank you, ladies. Hopefully Em will see this before she goes on vacation. Check your mail real early, will ya? And thanks again for uh, finding the sentences where I just kind of up and went to the next thing  And to Erica… thanks for being quick on the second half. It helps with the postitus.

Devourer of Souls

Chapter 12

XYZ

The energy from the time vortex was acting as an electro magnet for just the type of non-matter that made up the soul. The vortex energy already containing the mass was being drawn into then through the medallion then back towards the Doctor. It tore back through him as the soul of the creature followed it, right into the medallion.

Passing into the small piece of Time Lord technology, the minds of the creature bounced around, thoughts and memories resonating through the Doctor. They were also burning him, threatening to tear him apart. Between the contact with the thing's mind and intentions, and the vortex pushing into him from both ends and barely managing to travel out of him and into the floor, he was almost afraid he'd burst into flames if this continued.

He saw what the girl must have seen, coming into contact with it—the destruction of an entire generation of womb-born Time Lord children—their souls had been especially succulent, for some reason. No wonder his people had switched to…alternate means of propagating the species.

No wonder this thing had been so delighted at the prospect of devouring the Doctor and a small girl of such 'natural' origins. And no wonder the girl was so happy with the prospect of this creature's demise. It would not stop until it was stopped; it would feed on the souls of the keepers of time, and it would use that power to instigate trouble throughout the universes from now until the end of time.

All this seemed to happen very slowly—time being relative and all. It could have been weeks or months or years of this thing's deeds throbbing against the inside of his head, the vortex amplifying the burning sensation resonating from the walls of the medallion and the vortex itself, crushing in on both of his hearts.

The system that had formed was now gone, the air cleared of both the shadowy ghost and the golden force of the vortex, but it was still crushing him.

XYZ

Violet's hand hurt from pounding on the door. The ship was going on about 'patience' and things she really didn't want to hear about. Finally, she stopped pounding. Didn't the ship know what was going on? Didn't she know he was being squished together on both sides, and that the Filivand were all burning him, frying his insides and his brains?

Nose dribbling, the girl wiped it on the sleeve of the jacket. She wouldn't cry again—she refused to. "I don't want ta be here all by myself," she pleaded with the ship. "Even if you think I can't help. I don't want ta be here by myself. You don't either."

The ship made an apologetic knock.

Pressing her cheek against the cool inside of the metal door, Violet sighed, trying not to feel alone. But no matter how much she told herself that everything was going to work out, and it'd be just fine, the more she had terrible visions of herself sitting alone in this strange living ship, all by herself until the end of time. What if she never, ever found her way back home? She'd told Uncle Mickey that she'd come back—that's what she'd been promised by the other ship. But what if it wasn't so? What if she'd been sent away like Moses in a basket, but with no one to stop it from floating all the way down the river and into the sea?

She'd put up with a million dinners of asparagus and a thousand stories about work just to have her family back. Or just to know that this Doctor was returning, and that he wasn't completely evil or something.

Leaning her back against the door, she looked up at the rafters, realizing the real root of the current problem. "I don't like doing nothing."

XYZ

The tiny door of the medallion finally slid closed, forming a blue, angular flower. Power still coursed through the Doctor, but the invading mental presence was gone. As it's influence lifted like a dirty fog, the Doctor could see the reduced edges of the universe. They were bruised and scarred and stretched out of shape, but they were stable.

He could still feel the tendril leading back to the child's place of origin, which should have collapsed and disappeared when she arrived, or at the very least, once the creature was distracted or imprisoned. Following it across the now-greater divide, he found another miniature vortex, also still caught in a burning, insanity-driving holding pattern. And at the center…

"You could have told me," he told her gently. No anger… and at least for the moment… no regret. He just wanted her to know. She could have told him.

Her voice was so much more mature, earthier—wiser. "I almost did. Then I saw the panic in your eyes, that last time we spoke. I did not want you to worry or lament about something that could not be changed."

He didn't agree-but he understood. "I just need to know one thing, Rose," his mind spoke out to the other vortex, so far across the universes.

"Anything, Doctor."

The medallion was growing heavy in his hand, but the energy was still being forced through him in two directions at once. "How much of an ass did I act like, that night?" She'd never told him, but it was virtually impossible to not have behaved completely badly, when one wakes up with one's own pants upon one's head.

There was a strange laugh in his head. It was a cross between Rose's own laugh, and the hollow echoings of Bad Wolf. "A perfect gentleman. Excluding the serenade from the Best of Sonny and Cher, and the 'crown of pants.'"

The voice may have resonated with the Bad Wolf, but there was something else he felt there, across the thin thread—her exhaustion. The vortex that coursed through both of them had been finite, so he did not have to worry about her being consumed, but due to its limited nature, it was taking all of her own power to control it.

She was holding on to talk to him. He had to make this quick. "Rose, I'll take care of her. But please let go. The intelligence and organizing consciousness are contained. I'll sever the connection on my end, but you must let go."

"Let her know…" there was a hesitant, yet fatigued pause. "I loved both of you."

The Doctor closed his eyes, wishing he could touch her across this great divide. He wanted to put a hand on her cheek to let her know everything would be all right. But only if she let go.

"The tapestry created by the Time Lords is gone, but she's become this single thread." There wasn't enough of the tapestry left to send the girl home; it'd be like trying to send a house along a radio wave. But ones and zeros… "Rose… don't you want to see how it all turns out?"

She hadn't taken in enough of the vortex to truly become Bad Wolf again, with the infinite backwards and forwards knowledge that she'd had before. Which was why she couldn't see past the moment. It was also why she faltered so heavily that he could feel it across the divide. "I'm going to let go. You have to let go when I do. The remainder of the entity will pass into nothingness. You're done, you've protected her. But if you hold on to the vortex, it's going to kill you. And you'll never see how she turns out." The Doctor paused, letting it sink in. "It's just a thread, but it might grow as she does; the thread was never even there before today. Till then…" he smiled, both in reality and in his mind. "Check your email, Rose."

He could at least feel her willingness to sever the connection. "You're the other half of me," she said desperately, almost talking herself out of letting go.

The desire to just touch her was overwhelming, but he couldn't. No more than she could touch the hologram image he'd projected through the rift the last time they'd had this conversation. "And you're the other part of me."

And with that—he let go.

XYZ

Suddenly, the golden light swirling around Rose stopped its spiral. The particles stopped in mid-air, hovering momentarily.

Mickey looked at Pete, and both of them rushed closer to Rose. Sternly, Pete gestured for the security forces to lower their weapons, which had been trained on Rose.

The moment their guns were lowered, the yellow energy exploded outward in all directions, away from Rose. it passed through every object and everything, dissipating into the ceiling and walls and floor.

It left instantly, the room dropping from the intense golden glow to the artificial blue of the florescent lights.

Rose seemed suspended there for just a moment, as if she were at the top of a roller coaster, waiting for free-fall to drag her downward. Mickey seemed to get it, closing the rest of the distance between them. When the last bit of charge from the Time Vortex dissipated, he grabbed her as she dropped like a sack of bricks.

No one made even a bit of noise, save Jackie, who yelped once, then caught up with the remainder of her family. She helped Mickey lower her daughter to the ground but was butted out of the way suddenly as building personnel began checking her vital signs. Pete put an arm around her. "Rose is alive," he whispered, by way of comfort."

Hand pressed to her mouth, Jackie shook her head. "But where's Violet?" Deep down, Jackie knew. She just needed someone else to say it.

Pete drew in a deep breath as he watched Mickey direct the emergency technicians. "She's with the Doctor." He didn't know how he knew—he just knew. "They stopped it, he and Rose. They both stopped it, and Violet's ok."

Jackie sniffed, barely holding back her emotions. "She's just a little girl, Pete."

Shaking his head, Pete frowned. He'd only just recently figured this out himself. He didn't know how Jackie would take it. "She was never ours to keep, Jacks. She belongs to the whole universe. All of them. And they all belong to her."

Jackie shook her head, not really accepting his answer.

He knew Jackie was thinking about her last day of primary school, her first kiss, every birthday they'd not share with the girl, and it killed her. Pete knew it would keep killing her, every day. It was to Jackie's credit, to a degree. Her own feelings for the Doctor aside, she'd adored Violet. She'd never seen the child as anything other than a normal girl who needed loved and played with and the occasional trip to the corner for a time-out. Unfortunately, it also made her entirely unwilling to acknowledge that the universe had other plans for Violet—things much grander than graduations and first kisses.

He was certain those would be there too, but if his own life was any indication, it'd be taking place in those brief moments or long lulls between the chaos. Pete had stepped into that role, on some small level, when he'd become Gemini and began feeding information about the Cyberus robots to the underground. He'd made that choice. Jackie would see it as the universe choosing for Violet—he knew Rose would see it as the girl being called.

Pete knew, ultimately, he'd regret missing all of those things he'd not be able to do with the girl. But Violet was part of something much larger, and they just needed to give her the room to "be." Even if it meant "being" some place else with someone who could guide her more fully into what she was to become.

He silently wished the Doctor well. Knowing Violet… he'd need it.

XYZ

Arms wrapped around her legs, Violet rocked herself gently as she sat with her back pressed to one door. She rested her head on her knees, not knowing what would come next. There was silence in her head and everything seemed to be calm and asleep in the universe. She couldn't feel the Bad Wolf any more, and that frightened her as much as anything, making her feel alone in the world. She'd cry, if she'd have been capable of tears any more. Something seemed to have drained them out of her; it didn't feel like she'd be able to cry and have that sort of release ever again.

Finally, the door next to her opened, and the Doctor walked through, dragging a battered, dirty green lawn chair.

His face was a little dirty and his hair was standing on-end, looking frazzled and fried, like Violet's did, when they forgot to use the spray-on conditioner. One sleeve was singed and the smell of ozone seemed to be radiating off of him. He looked tired, like he could sleep for a week and then still take another nap besides, but he was there and whole, and his brain hadn't been cooked or anything.

Looking around, he caught sight of Violet, just as she scrambled to her feet, throwing her arms around both of his legs, holding on for dear life.

Leaning the folded chair up against the door, the Doctor put a hand on her head. "Hey, now. You didn't think I'd let that thing get me, did you?"

Violet looked up at him with sad eyes, not willing to admit that she'd doubted him. He did not seem to be a man that garnered doubt. 

Crouching down beside her, he looked into her eyes. His own were brown, like hers, but they seemed to have whole galaxies swirling behind them. "I will always, ALWAYS come back for you," he promised. "And I will ALWAYS escape and succeed." The last was said as if he had realized it was his most solemn duty to do so.

Not knowing what else to do, he hugged her, holding on for dear life.

She'd been as brave as she was capable of being for the day—she'd let go of her mum and let Bad Wolf send her away. The girl hugged him back, somewhat afraid that if she let go, he'd fade like a dream. "Promise?"

The Doctor grinned. "Always, always and ALWAYS."

Violet sighed in relief, relaxing against his shoulder, a smile slipping through. "Good. Cuz someone needs ta feed me." It had to be well past breakfast time by now. Her stomach seemed to be saying so, now that all the knots and tension had gone.

The Doctor picked her up, spinning them both in a circle once. "To feed you? I think we can manage that." He walked over to the center of the control room. "Give me half a mo', will ya?"

Messing with a knob or two, he looked the control console up and down. "Well, what happens next is up to you, old girl. He's flying blind and half his time circuits were shot just maintaining his trajectory through the same bit of space and time on two different plains, so he might need a bit of a tow, and like most fellahs he's a bit of a fixer-upper, but he's all yours."

An air hose let out a quick rush.

Smiling, the Doctor inched the girl up higher in his arms. "I figured you'd say that. I have some business to attend to, so he's all yours."

Walking out of the central room, the Doctor left his ship to it. "How do you feel about hotdogs," the Doctor asked.

Violet made a face. "I don't eat processed meat."

His face twisted in shock. "You don't know what you're missing. What about chips?"

The girl shook her head. "I don't eat fried foods."

He was running out of food choices here. "Cheese and macaroni?"

A small, mischievous smile pulled back on the girl's lips. "I'm allergic to milk. And I don't eat enriched pasta, trans-fats or complex carbs."

Carrying her to the kitchen, the Doctor frowned. "Now you're just giving me a hard time. Has anyone ever told you that you're petulant?"

The girl grinned as he sat her on the counter. "Hotdogs it is, then."

The Doctor nodded once, looking her square in the eye. Not many grownups bothered to do that. "Well, then. Now that that's settled. Cheese in the middle? Or are you too ALLERGIC?"

This was going to be fun. "Oh, cheese in the middle. But only as long as you have the mustard and relish that're already mixed…"

The End…And The Beginning.

Thanks so much to everyone who stuck through this  Everybody has been so kind and welcoming over in this section. You folks're awesome, and it's certainly encouraging to take another whackadoodle at Doctor Who fanfic.


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